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THE 

GREAT MINISTRY 




rEORGE E.HORR 



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I 




Class _ _1 

Book. . H S£ 

Copyright N?_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Great Ministry 



GEORGE E. HORR, D. D. 

President of the 
Newton Theological Institution 




BIBLE STUDY PUBLISHING COMPANY 
Boston, Massachusetts 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
One Copy neceived 

FEB 18 '1S09 

! OoDvrlfrM Entry '_' 
CLASS £L- _AXft «i>. 






Copyright, 1907, 1908 

by the 

Bible Study Publishing Company, Boston 



MONOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

F. E. Bacon & Co. 
boston 



FOREWORD 

This book, like its companion volume, The Train- 
ing of the Chosen People, is composed of chapters pub- 
lished on successive weeks during the year, in a 
number of weekly and daily papers. They were 
designed to interpret the Bible Study Union Course 
of Sunday School Lessons on the Gospel History of 
Christ. 

These chapters were not composed by a painful 
reference to authorities or to the opinions of others. 
The main lines of investigation as to the gospel nar- 
ratives were not unfamiliar, and with these in mind 
the author has sat down before the text, seeking its 
disclosure of the portraiture of Jesus. While the 
task of verification and revision has been done with 
care, the book, as a whole, has almost written itself. 
It has been a happy experience to record what one 
has seen of the divine Man in and through the pages 
of the gospels. 

This study has freshly impressed upon the mind 
of the writer the fact that the person of Christ is the 
stronghold of evangelical Christianity. The great 
problem that confronts Naturalism and Agnosticism 
is the problem of the classification of Jesus. May we 
not be compelled to put Him back of the mundane 
order into the cosmic order? No line of investiga- 
tion is more helpful in answering this vital question 
than a first-hand study of the New Testament por- 
traiture of Jesus. 



iv Foreword 

Through the whole course of his joyful labor the 
author has been encouraged to believe that he was 
doing something worth while by appreciations as to 
the helpfulness of these expositions written by those 
into whose hands they fall. Personally unknown to 
one another, these lovers of the Master and the author 
of this book discovered that they shared kindred 
convictions and experiences. The author can desire 
no better fortune for this child of his spirit than that 
it may render a like service in a wider circle. 

. GEORGE E. HORR. 

Newton Centre, Mass., October 31, 1908. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Promised Saviour 1 

II. The Advent 5 

III. The Silent Years 9 

IV. Preparing the Way of the Lord 13 

V. The Initiation of Jesus 17 

VI. The Recognition of Jesus 21 

VII. The Beginning of the Public Ministry 26 

VIII. True Religion and True Worship 31 

IX. Jesus' Own View of His Mission 35 

X. The Early Self-revelation of Jesus... 39 

XI. The Fidelity of Jesus to Himself 43 

XII. The Rights of the Soul 47 

XIII. Discerning the Lord 51 

XIV. The Society of Jesus 55 

XV. What is Righteousness? 59 

XVI. The Motive of Righteousness 63 

XVII. The Evidences of the Messiah 67 

XVIII. The Three Attitudes of Men toward 

Jesus 71 

XIX. An Exposition of the Kingdom 75 

XX. The Finger of God 79 

XXI. The Conditions of Effective Christian 

Work S3 

XXII. A Great Temptation 87 

XXIII. The Parting of the Ways 91 

XXIV. The Unity of the Character of Jesus. 95 
XXV. The Great Confession 99 

XXVI. Forces that Advance and Resist the 

Kingdom 103 

XXVIL The Divine Assurance 107 

XXVIII. The Motives to Forgiveness Ill 

XXIX. Unresponsiveness to Truth 115 

XXX. Fellowship and Service 119 

v 



VI 



Table of Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXXI. Our Lord's Witness to Himself 123 

XXXII. True and False Religion 127 

XXXIII. The Use of Privilege 130 

XXXIV. The Joy of God 134 

XXXV. The Lord of Life and of Death 138 

XXXVI. The Mind of the Master 142 

XXXVII. The Rewards of the Kingdom 146 

XXXVIII. The Serenity of the Master 150 

XXXIX. The Secret of Jesus 154 

XL. Going up to Jerusalem 157 

XLI. The Nature of Sin 161 

XLII. The Witness of Jesus 165 

XLIII. The Temper of Jesus after His Wit- 
ness against Jerusalem 169 

XLIV. The Second Coming of Christ 173 

XLV. The Last Supper 177 

XLVI. The Farewell Message 181 

XLVII. The Shadow of the Cross 185 

XLVIII. Caiaphas and Pilate 189 

XLIX. " He Died for our Sins " 193 

L. The Living Jesus 197 

LI. " The Same Jesus " 201 

LIL Interpreting Jesus 206 



THE GREAT MINISTRY 



CHAPTER I. 
The Promised Saviour. 

Scattered References. 

The principal argument upon which the Apostles 
relied to convince their Hebrew brethren that Jesus 
should be accepted as Lord and Saviour, was based on 
the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. If we 
accept the theory of many modern scholars that a 
somewhat later date than formerly was assumed 
must be assigned to certain parts of the Old Testa- 
ment, the argument is hardly affected, for the Old 
Testament, as the Septuagint translation conclusively 
proves, was in existence in its present form centuries 
before the Christian era. Nor is the strength of the 
argument seriously affected by the theory of many of 
these scholars that certain Messianic references are 
less specific than the older authorities affirmed. Again, 
the force of the reasoning does not depend upon the 
minute interpretation of isolated passages. When we 
survey the course of prophetic teaching in a large way, 
its forward look becomes very impressive, and when 
we combine the specific anticipations of individual 
prophets in a single conception we can hardly fail to 
see that we have before us a picture of the Messiah 
which is almost startlingly actualized in the career 
of Jesus of Nazareth. 

We are all familiar with the way one picture may be 
concealed in another, When we look intently at the 
representation from several angles of vision we come 
to see in it what was not perceptible at first. There 
emerges, it may be, from a landscape, the form of a 



2 The Great Ministry 

human countenance, and, after we have once seen 
the hidden portraiture, we can hardly see anything 
else in the drawing. Or, to take another illustration, 
as you stand in the Franconia Notch of the White 
Mountains, between the Eagle Cliff of Mount Lafay- 
ette and Cannon Mountain, and look up at the jagged 
declivity of the latter, you see simply a mass of rocks ; 
but as you fasten your attention upon them you dis- 
cern the perfect representation of a human face, 
across which the scud of the flying clouds breaks. It 
is the famous "Old Man of the Mountain." 

Something like this takes place in our study of the 
Hebrew prophets. We can relate their utterances in 
a large degree to the circumstances of their own times; 
we can see in them ordinary history, and the report 
of orations, but all the time we are aware that we have 
not fathomed the depths of this wonderful literature. 
It points forward to a future. It contains clear but 
scattered hints and suggestions of the distinctive 
features of the new era. These anticipations center 
about a Person. And while, perhaps, not enough is 
told about Him to enable us to forecast with precision 
just what manner of man He will be, at the same 
time enough is told about Him to enable us to recog- 
nize Him with certainty when He appears. 

The general correctness of this statement is con- 
firmed by the impression that the Hebrew prophets 
made upon their own people. The Jews were thor- 
oughly responsive to the Messianic hope that animates 
these writings. Indeed, there are many indications 
that this hope, throughout the centuries immediately 
before the birth of Jesus, became the dominant note 
of Judaism, coloring the political attitude of the 
Hebrews toward Greece and Rome, and furnishing 
the imaginative background of their ethics and 
religion. To be sure the popular interpretations of 
these prophecies failed, through want of insight, to 
reach the truth as to their spiritual significance, but 



The Promised Saviour 



probably there were always some fine natures that 
were attuned to the historic fulfilment (Lu. 2:25, 37, 
38; Jo. 1:41, 49). And we know that the favorite 
and effective argument of Paul to convince the Jews 
as to the claims of Jesus rested upon the right interpre- 
tation of the prophecies (Acts 17:2,3; 18:28). 

But the detailed forecasts of the Messiah are not 
unsatisfactory. Students of the Scripture will find it 
exceedingly profitable to arrange the specific Old 
Testament prophecies of the Messiah and their New 
Testament fulfilments 
in parallel columns, and 
ponder them so that 
they make their natural 
and legitimate impres- 
sion on their own minds. 
He was to be born at 
Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; 
Mt. 2:1; Lu. 2:11). His 
active mission was to be 
ushered in by a great 
preacher (Mai. 3:1; 4:5, 
6; Is. 40:3; Jo. 1:15-28). 
He was to teach right- 
eousness, and to do mar- 
velous works of mercy (Is. 61:1-3; Lu. 4:17-21; 8:1; 
Mt. 11:5). He was to be recognized bv some as the 
Messiah (Zech. 9:9; Mt. 21:5-9). He was to be re- 
jected by the nation, but betrayed by an individual 
for thirty pieces of silver (Is. 53:3; Zech. 11:12, 13; 
Jo. 19:14, 15; Mt. 26:15). He was to be crucified 
(Ps. 22:16; Jo. 19:18), with malefactors (Is. 53:12; 
Mt. 27:38), given gall and vinegar for drink (Ps. 69: 
21; Jo. 19:28-30), but His bones were not to be 
broken (Ps. 34:20; Ex. 12:46; Jo. 19:33), and His 
vesture was to be divided by lot (Ps. 22:18; Jo. 19: 
23, 24). He was to die as an offering for the sins of 
others (Is. 53:10; Mt. 20:28). The grave was not 




The Prophet Isaiah. 

By Michael Angelo. 



4 The Great Ministry 

to hold Him (Ps. 16:9,10; Acts 2:31). He was to 
establish an enduring kingdom (Is. 53:10, 11; Mt. 28: 
19, 20). 

Such forecasts and fulfilments might be largely 
multiplied. They are too numerous and detailed to 
be accounted for on the ground of chance coincidence. 
But the argument does not turn wholly on these 
definite and almost startling correspondences. Be- 
neath details there is revealed the form and counte- 
nance of the suffering servant of Jehovah, the Re- 
deemer who is at the same time ''the man of sorrows." 
The drift, the general impression, the mood which 
these writers beget, however, are the great thing. 
Still, when we seek an adequate description of the 
character and mission and achievement of Jesus, how 
often we are constrained to turn to the account given 
of Him long centuries before His birth (Is. ch. S3) ! 

It is said that the term "indenture" arose from the 
custom of dividing the parchment which contained 
the contract by a notched line cut with a knife. 
When each indentation fitted into its counterpart the 
document was self -attested as genuine. Something 
like that is true of the prophetic representation of 
the Messiah and the historic life of Jesus of Nazareth. 
History and prophecy match each other, and this 
correspondence demonstrates that the history is 
simply the development of the plan of God, and that 
the history is to be interpreted in the light of the 
prophecy. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Advent. 

Mt. 1:18-25; Lu. 1:5-66; 2:1-20; Jo. 1:1-18. 

11 There is nothing so easy," says Principal Fair- 
bairn, "as to change conditions into causes, to mistake 
the enumeration of formal elements for the discovery 
of the plastic mind." The administrative system of 
the Graeco-Roman power, the developments of later 
Judaism, and the Messianic expectation do something 
to explain the readiness of the world for the advent 




From a photograph. 



The Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. 

of Jesus, but they do nothing to account for the vital 
spiritual energy that emanated from His personality, 
and transmuted the historic forces into historic Chris- 
tianity. Within the grain of wheat there resides a 
marvelous vital force. When the seed is planted in 
the soil, that force, like a loom, weaves the chemical 
constituents of the earth, the moisture and the sun- 
shine, into the growing plant. A spiritual force like 
that entered the realm of human life at the birth of 
Jesus, and ever since it has been weaving human 
thought, human aspirations, human institutions, into 
new patterns, more or less conformable to its own 
type. The civilized world has made no mistake in 



6 The Great Ministry 

declaring by its calendar that the birth of Jesus 
marks the beginning of a new era. Whether or not 
we are personally followers of Jesus, we are confronted 
by the fact that His career marks the introduction 
of a novel and tremendous spiritual force into the 
life of humanity. And we are to appraise that force 
not merely by the record of it in the gospels, but by 
a sympathetic appreciation of the whole course of 
history as influenced by Jesus, just as we truly appre- 
hend the Mississippi, not simply by exploring its 
sources, but by traversing the vast floods that it 
pours through the continent to the gulf. 

It is from this point of view that w r e should study 
the narratives that make up the Christmas story. 
They are to be interpreted in the light of the sub- 
sequent history. If the life whose beginning on the 
earth they record can be fairly classified as simply 
human, they become improbable. If, on the other 
hand, Jesus cannot be fairly classified Avith men, and 
if His influence has interpenetrated human life with 
divine forces, and brought men everywhere, w T hen 
they have responded to it, into conscious vital fellow- 
ship with God, we come to these narratives with 
reverent confidence. 

After all, what is the essential thing in all these 
records but this — that Jesus is not the product of the 
forces that are resident in human life and in the order 
of the world, but His personality is identical with the 
creative intelligence and will that is the ground and 
source of human life and the visible universe (Jo. 
1:1-4)? And yet, at the same time, this personality 
enters into human life and the order of the world, 
becoming absolutely identified with the experiences 
and conditions of humanity (Jo. 1:14). In His 
nature Jesus is identical with God, in His life He is 
identified with man. 

From this point of view we cannot miss seeing the 
beauty and satisfactoriness of the advent stories. 



The Advent 



We know little about Mary, the mother of Jesus. 
But if the narratives in the gospel of Luke were among 
the memories she cherished in her heart, they reflect 
the purity and delicacy of her sweet woman's soul. 
And she had such insight and spiritual elevation that 
she gave utterance to the supreme hymn in human 
literature (Lu. 1:46-55). Surely she was fitted above 
all women to be the medium of the divine life. 

It is also in harmony with the marvelous event that 
some prophetic spirits should have been responsive to 
the coming fact (Lu. 1:42-45). Nor is it strange that, 
as the fulfilment of the 
ancient prophecies drew 
near, sympathetic hearts 
should have been moved 
to look for it, and should 
have come to the town 
that Micah had foretold 
would be the birthplace of 
the Messiah (Micah 5:2; 
Mt. 2:1-10). Nor do we 
wonder that a specific 
divine announcement ac- 
companied the birth of 
Jesus. In realms of being 
beyond our own there 
must have been a pro- 
found interest in the great 
revelation, and it was congruous that those who felt 
this most should have broken through the frontiers 
of the realm of nature to interpret to men something 
of its significance (Lu. 2:8-20). Indeed, without the 
song of the angels we should have felt that the sym- 
pathy of all ranges of being in the astounding event 
was insufficiently manifested. 

Certainly, when we take these narratives together 
they are marked by a deep interior agreement. If 
Jesus was the "Word" made flesh (Jo. 1:14), every 




A Street in Bethlehem. 



8 The Great Ministry 

difficulty vanishes. The parts of the story hang to- 
gether. The narrative is congruous with itself, on the 
plane on which it is projected, as a mathematician 
might say. 

But the parts of the advent story are not only con- 
gruous with each other, they are in deep interior 
accord with the subsequent career of Jesus. As Dr. 
Newman Smyth has suggested, the story of the 
resurrection matches the story of the advent as a 
glorious sunset matches a beautiful sunrise on a per- 
fect day in June, and the deeds of power and words 
of wisdom match the advent and the resurrection as 
the golden hours of such a day match its beginning 
and its close. 

Upon this fact of the inner coherence and con- 
gruity of the gospel narrative we may build a noble 
argument for the historic truthfulness of the whole 
record. If the Evangelists imagined the narratives 
of the birth of Jesus they addressed themselves to a 
stupendous task, for they made it necessary that they 
should portray a life that would match their intro- 
duction. No temple constucted by human hands 
could match that porch. If, however, they did not 
imagine but described; if the record of the birth and 
the record of the life are records of fact, we can 
account for the poise with which they tread these 
perilous heights, and for the unrivaled success with 
which they have carried their story on. The reply 
that Rousseau gave in his Entile to those who asserted 
that the gospel story was a fiction is still of force: 
"Then the inventor would be more astounding than 
the hero." 



CHAPTER III. 
The Silent Years. 

Mt. ch. 2; Lu. 2:21-52. 

We have only a hint or two in the gospel narra- 
tives as to the life of Jesus until He had reached His 
thirtieth year; but, for all that, we may have a 
tolerably distinct picture of the conditions under 
which the boy grew into young manhood, and the 
habit of His life. 

Judaism has developed and put in practice one of 
the noblest ideals of the home the world has ever 
seen. To this day the typical Jewish home leaves 




Nazareth. 



From a photograph. 



little to be desired. In it there is a mingling of con- 
jugal, parental and filial devotion that binds human 
hearts into the higher unity of the family. In the 
Jewish household, then as now, the wife and mother 
had a place of peculiar honor. The reluctance, even 
of the poor Russian Jews who have found refuge in 
our American cities, to permit their daughters to 
enter gainful occupations; their desire that girls 
shall be trained in the home so as to be efficient mis- 
tresses of the homes they are to have, is a survival 
to our own times of the ancient Hebrew ideal of the 
sanctity of the home and of woman's place in it, The 

9 



10 The Great Ministry 

most beautiful and moving love story in the world 
is the narrative in Genesis of the love of Jacob and 
Rachel. Making proper allowance for Oriental cus- 
toms, no woman could desire a greater love than 
that of Jacob. After she had been dead forty years 
she still held her place in her husband's heart. Into 
such a home our Lord was born. 

We cannot doubt that the best ideals of Hebrew 
womanhood were fully realized in Mary, the mother 
of Jesus. Protestant Christians, in their revolt from 
the Roman adoration of Mary, should not forget that 
she is forever, as the angel said, "blessed among 
women. " Does the Sistine Madonna idealize too 
much the glorious womanliness, the tender mother- 
hood, the celestial consciousness of Mary? We can 
hardly think so. And this was the mother at whose 
breast the child Jesus nursed. Her lips taught His 
to lisp the sweet Aramaic ; her deft fingers made His 
baby clothes; her hand steadied His first steps; 
upon her bosom, into her ear, He confided His childish 
joys and sorrows; her voice taught Him the law and 
history of their ancient race, and framed His first 
prayers. No picture of His boyhood is complete 
that does not enshrine the face, the form, the voice, 
the manner of His mother. 

Doubtless it was a home of slender means. But 
poverty is always relative, and there is no reason 
for thinking that the household was ever in want. 
With industry and good management there was 
enough. 

We get just one glimpse of Jesus as He is approach- 
ing adolescence (Lu. 2:41-52). Artists have sought 
with varying success to portray the incident of the 
visit to the temple and Jesus' conversation with the 
doctors. Hofmann's picture is well known, but Tis- 
sot's representation of the boy leaving the temple, 
walking between Mary and Joseph, is singularly 
happy. As you look into the boy's eyes you see 



The Silent Years 



11 



that His soul belongs to a different realm from that 
in which Joseph, or even Mary, is living. He is the 
dutiful human child, but already He has heard in the 
depths of His own soul the call of His Father's work. 
Before machinery had taken the place of hand labor 
one of the most attractive occupations was that of a 
carpenter. It is clean, wholesome work, and any suc- 
cess in it demands the intelligence, precision and skill 
that only come from long training of the mind, the 
eye and the hand. The fashioning of an Oriental 
plough-yoke was 
not the work of a 
tyro, while a well 
made and fitted 
door or window 
was no easier a 
piece of work then 
than now. Our 
most advanced psy- 
chology is inculcat- 
ing that a high 
place should be 

given to manual The Virgin's Fountain, Nazareth. 

training m trie cie- Ag this i8 the only spring in the towni Jesus and Hi8 

Velopment Of intel- mother must have gone to it daily. 

ligence and character. Singularly enough, this is the 
precise discipline that Jesus appears to have had in 
His boyhood home. 

All the outward conditions of the life of Jesus were 
favorable to the production of a strong, noble type 
of character. But outward conditions are not the 
final determining element in the issues of any human 
life. The first temptations of Jesus could not have 
been those which met Him in the desert after His 
baptism. In the happiest and most united house- 
holds there are inevitable irritations and annoyances 
arising from the subtile conflict of temperaments. 
Even when young men do not yield to lower solid- 




12 The Great Ministry 

tations, the temptation to envy, pride, and selfish- 
ness may be almost overpowering. The purity of 
the home atmosphere may not be antiseptic against 
these subtile bacteria. To be sure, this home was 
Oriental, and we Occidentals find it difficult to repro- 
duce imaginatively all of its intimate details, but this 
home was human, and that is something we can all 
interpret. Let any young man or woman, trained in 
a loving home, with brothers and sisters, recall the 
inevitable discipline, even under happiest conditions, 
of these human associations, and the reminiscence 
will suggest something of the self-discipline and self- 
control of Jesus. 

It has sometimes been said that you cannot be 
certain that Jesus was sinless until you have scruti- 
nized every act He ever did. That assertion, however, 
overlooks the genetic relationship of all acts, and the 
genetic evolution of character. You see the ship 
swinging with the tide held by the steel cable to the 
anchor lodged in the rocks. You can only see a few 
links of the cable, but you know that the fathoms of 
it hidden beneath the water are equally strong, be- 
cause these links you can see are doing their work of 
holding the ship. The prophet Jeremiah asked (12: 
5) : " If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have 
wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with 
horses ?" But if one can contend with horses, surely 
he has not been wearied by footmen. The fact that 
Jesus resisted temptations, concerning which we are 
well informed, that were, as we shall see, peculiarly 
insidious and strong, affords a trustworthy basis for 
a judgment as to His self-conquest in the silent 
years. The whole cable holds. The contention with 
horses demonstrates the mastery over the footmen. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Preparing the Way of the Lord. 

Lu. 3:1-18, and Scattered References. 

The greatness of John the Baptist has the supreme 
attestation of the witness of Jesus. He said, — and 
that at a moment when the faith of John in Himself 
seemed to waver, — " Among them 
that are born of women there is 
none greater than John" (Lu. 7:28). 
If John did not stand so near Jesus 
we could more easily recognize the 
justness of this opinion. And it is 
an incidental but significant testi- 
mony to the greatness of Jesus that 
a rich, large, heroic figure like that 
of John the Baptist is almost over- 
looked when brought near the per- 
sonality of our Lord. 

The proper background for the 
appreciation of the message and 
career of John the Baptist is afforded by recalling 
that, during the period of his activity, the Messianic 
expectation among the Hebrews was peculiarly vivid. 
The long delay in the fulfilment of the ancient proph- 
ecies had sharpened rather than dulled anticipa- 
tion. The very conflict of opinions as to how the 
prophecies were to be fulfilled intensified interest in 
the great theme. Some held that Jehovah Himself 
would come to judgment; others that the political 
sovereignty of Israel would be established over the 
nations by a series of miraculous events, and others 
that a new order would be inaugurated under some 
God-sent representative, in which the interest of 
righteousness should at least be as prominent as those 
of political dominion. This general expectation that 

13 




John the Baptist. 
By Titian. 



14 The Great Ministry 

Judaism was on the eve of a fulfilment of prophetic 
forecasts, no matter what the precise interpretation 
given to them by different parties, created a public 
temper singularly responsive to the call of a brave 
and noble personality like that of John the Baptist, 
whose message struck the chords of conscience, and 
whose personal life was in thorough agreement with 
his teaching. Josephus, who seems to go out of his 
way to avoid mentioning Jesus, records with some 
detail the deep and wide impression made upon the 




Hebron. 

The supposed home of John the Baptist. 

nation by the preaching of John the Baptist, who 
announced that the kingdom of God was at hand. 

Though John recognized Jesus as the Christ (Jo. 
1:29, 36), he did not fully grasp the precise nature 
of the Messianic kingdom or the method of Jesus 
(Lu. 7:19). But, in spite of this, his message was as 
perfectly adjusted to the work of our Lord as though 
he had understood it more perfectly. Such uncon- 
scious co-operations on the part of the workers sug- 
gest an impressive inference as to the divine super- 
intendence of human efforts. Men are all the time 
working like John the Baptist by the light of partial 
insights. But, as we look back upon their work and 
appreciate its delicate adjustments to a large purpose, 
we say: 



Preparing the Way of the Lord 15 

"Himself from God he could not free; 
He builded better than he knew." 

The specific point at which the preaching of John 
was adjusted to the message of Jesus, and so became 
preparative for our Lord's work, was his insistence 
that the kingdom of God was based upon the thorough- 
going righteousness of all its members. Whatever 
John's misconception as to the Messianic method 
(Lu. 3:15-17), he was absolutely clear that the king- 
dom of God did not embrace the whole nation as such. 
Abrahamic descent gave no title to membership 
(Lu. 3:8). The condition of membership was repent- 
ance, and the bringing forth of fruit worthy of re- 
pentance. We are so familiar with these ideas that 
it is easy for us to underestimate the profound origi- 
nality and insight of John the Baptist in taking his 
stand upon them. They were faithful to the inner 
spirit and genus of the ancient prophecies, rather 
than to their letter. They did away at a stroke with 
all those superficial and conventional distinctions of 
birth and special privilege, of which men have always 
made so much, and they laid the foundations of the 
kingdom of God deep down on the bed rock of per- 
sonal righteousness. The way by which Jesus 
secured that righteousness was not the way of John 
the Baptist, but it did not contradict John's way, or 
abrogate it. The way of Jesus simply added to 
repentance the mighty force of faith. But the end 
that Jesus contemplated — a kingdom of righteous- 
ness — is absolutely identical with the ideal of John. 

Perhaps John did not fully recognize how his great 
central principle was to universalize the kingdom 
of God. Jesus saw it, and taught it (Mt. 25:32), but 
His disciples did not see it. It took a remarkable 
series of providences to open the eyes of Peter to the 
fact (Acts 10:34,35). As soon as the early church 
caught a glimpse of it their entire attitude toward 
the world was revolutionized. When Paul grasped 



16 The Great Ministry 

the central thought of John the Baptist's message, he 
became the Apostle to the Gentiles. The idea rings 
through the epistles like a dominant chord in a musi- 
cal movement, and, in the last chapter of the New 
Testament, it sounds forth full and clear : "The Spirit 
and the bride say, Come. And ... he that will, 
let him take the water of life freely " (Rev. 22:17). 

The spirituality, the universality and the democracy 
of the kingdom of God were in germ in that great doc- 
trine of John the Baptist, and its application to human 
governments laid the firm foundation of free institu- 
tions. When we think of John the Baptist let us not 
picture him as a rude and shaggy fanatic, or as a 
vague preacher of righteousness; let us think of him 
as the man who first taught effectively the great doc- 
trine that membership in the kingdom of God does 
not depend on birth or position, or upon any of the 
accidents of fortune, but upon the movement of the 
soul toward righteousness. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Initiation of Jesus. 

Mt. 3:13—4: 11. 

The essential feature of the message of John the 
Baptist was that membership in the kingdom of God 
was not dependent upon birth or special privilege of 
any sort, but upon the attitude of the individual to- 
ward the claims of righteousness. The attainment 
of this right relationship on the part of sinful men 
involved repentance, which John did not conceive of 
simply as an emotional experience, but as a resolute 
turning away from wickedness to righteousness. In 
his thought of repentance, as throughout the New 




The River Jordan. *" * photograph ' 

Testament, the main element is not sorrow, but ac- 
tion. Rightly conceived, sorrow for sin is simply 
the reverse side of love of righteousness, but both the 
sorrow and the love are worthless unless the living 
spirit actually espouses and works for righteousness. 
The rite of baptism, which John administered to his dis- 
ciples, was a true and beautiful symbol of his germinal 
ideas. It admirably typified the death to sin and the life 
to righteousness which he was preaching (Rom. 6:2-4). 
When Jesus, therefore, came to John desiring to 
be baptized, it signified that Jesus recognized and 

17 



18 The Great Ministry 

fully accepted the ideas of John for which his bap- 
tism stood. In no more effective way could Jesus 
have declared to the world, that, however high the 
superstructure might rise which He was to build, He 
accepted the foundation that had been laid by John. 

Jesus adds to the ideas of John most important new 
conceptions, but the conceptions of Jesus do not con- 
tradict those of John. On the contrary, they are in 
such thorough accord with them that Jesus at once 
accepted the distinctive teachings of the Baptist as 
the foundation principles of His own Messianic king- 
dom. It was given to this greatest of the prophets, the 
crown and flower of the prophetic impulse in Judaism, 
to be so true to the past and to the future that above 
his work there arose the majestic structure of the king- 
dom of God. From this point of view the tokens of the 
divine approval at the baptism of Jesus (Mt. 3:16, 17) 
are not only a witness to Jesus but indirectly they are 
the strongest testimony to the harmony of the teach- 
ings of John with the thought of the Most High. 

In just what form the mission of Jesus lay in His 
own mind at this time we cannot say, but we may 
hold with confidence that the essential features of 
His teaching and career had risen above the horizon 
of consciousness, and He knew that He was the 
Messiah with the relationship to the Most High, the 
knowledge and the power involved in that office. 

The ritual initiation of His mission was accom- 
plished in His baptism. It now remained to vindicate 
the competency of Jesus for His work in His own con- 
sciousness and in the moral consciousness of mankind 
by the most searching tests of His moral and spiritual 
fibre. The initiation of baptism was slight and easy 
compared with the initiation of temptation. The 
trial to which Jesus was subjected involved the most 
subtile test of which we can conceive. If the Evan- 
gelists simply imagined this narrative, they had such 
an insight into the depths of personality and the 



The Initiation of Jesus 



19 



workings of motives that in comparison with them 
^Eschylus and Shakespeare were children. 

The weak place in a great soul is not apt to be in 
its passions. One cast in the largest and noblest 
mould may overcome the solicitations of the senses, 
perhaps not easily, but still without a struggle which 
shakes the fabric of the life. The very greatness of 
the spirit gives it power to rule the flesh. The strong- 
est and most insidious temptation that can come to 
such a one is to use his great endowments, not for 
sinful or unworthy ends, but for ends that fall short 
of the highest and noblest. Such a test involves the 
intellectual as well as the moral nature, for the temp- 
tation can only be resisted in view of the clearest 




Mount of Temptation. 



From a photograph. 



The Mount of Temptation (Mons Quarantania) , the traditional scene of Christ's temptation, 
is in the rugged wilderness of Judea, west of the Jordan river. In its bare and desolate sides 
are many holes and caves which were the homes of hermits in past ages. 

mental apprehension of those ends. Such a test 
involves a sympathetic response of the moral nature 
to this discrimination, of such intensity and volume 
that the soul which meets it is vindicated as abso- 
lutely and totally sound. Such a test is like the 
hammer stroke upon a bell. Every molecule in the 
great mass of metal must be in right relation to every 
other molecule, or else the clear ringing note will be 
wanting. It was a test like that which marked the 
completion of the initiation of Jesus. 



20 The Great Ministry 

Coming to the study of the temptation in the light 
of such reflections we see at once that it reveals both 
Jesus' conception of the ends for which His divine 
powers should be used, and His successful resistance 
of the appeal to use them for any inferior ends. He 
would use His powers unselfishly. He would not 
exert them for Himself, even to save his life (Mt. 
4:3, 4). He, who a few days later turned water into 
wine for the sake of others, would not turn stones 
into bread for the sake of Himself. He would use 
His powers to corroborate and reward faith but not 
to originate it (Mt. 4:5-7). He would not throw 
Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple that 
men might believe in Him, but He would raise Laza- 
rus from the dead for the sake of the sisters who be- 
lieved in Him. He would use His divine power 
to promote righteousness, but not as something to 
trade with to secure the support of evil (Mt. 4:8-10). 
He would not worship the Evil One for the sake of the 
kingdoms of the world, but He would cast out devils. 

In those days of searching, Jesus saw that divine 
powers must be used with complete unselfishness, in 
rigid subordination to moral motives, and in absolute 
devotion to righteousness. And He was so thorough- 
ly loyal to these exalted perceptions that He came 
forth from the trial without even the smell of fire upon 
His garments. 

In the baptism and in the temptation the ritual and 
actual initiations of Jesus for His work were com- 
pleted. In the former He linked His mission with 
the long line of the Hebrew prophets in the person 
of their last and greatest representative ; in the latter 
He vindicated His competency to be the spiritual 
leader and Saviour of men. Now that He has resisted 
every solicitation to use His power unworthily, He 
uses it all for the help of tempted men. "In that he 
himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to 
succor them that are tempted" (Heb. 2:18). 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Recognition of Jesus. 

Jo. 1:19—2:12. 

After Jesus returned from His temptation to the 
society of men, John the Baptist was the first person 
to recognize and proclaim Him as the Messiah. 

When John baptized Jesus he seems to have had a 
strong impression that his relative was the Coming- 
One, whom he had been proclaiming. The circum- 
stances that attended the baptism — the dove and the 
voice — made this impression a conviction. Thus far 
John had not identified Jesus unequivocally with the 
Messiah, but now he has no doubt whatever as to the 



S^S> 



safes 





^-^MP 


^ J 


m 






w^ j: 




\ik&£i< 


'J^.e. 



The River Jordan, near Jericho. 



From a photograph. 



fact. "John beareth witness of him, and crieth, say- 
ing, This was he of whom I said, He that cometh 
after me is become before me; for he was before me" 
(Jo. 1:15). 

This witness John repeated when a commission from 
the Sanhedrin came to him to inquire as to his own 
identity and claims. He was perfectly certain that 
he himself was not the Messiah, but he was equally 
clear that he was the herald of the Messiah, whom he 
had identified with Jesus. 

21 



22 The Great Ministry 

We must remember that up to this time John does 
not appear to have seen Jesus since the baptism — an 
interval of about six weeks. It is clear that during 
this period John had been reflecting upon the impres- 
sion Jesus had made upon him, and also that the 
prophecies of Isaiah had been in his thought, for he 
quotes from them, and refers to them by name in his 
reply to the Sanhedrin commission (Jo. 1:23). These 
reflections, and the impression made upon him by the 
form and countenance of Jesus, who must have been 
marked by many traces of His long inward struggle, 
gave a new impulse and insight to John. His ideas 
about the Messiah were revolutionized in a flash. He 
had proclaimed that the Coming One was a stern judge 
(Mt. 3:11, 12); he saw at once that He was far more 
and other than that. Perhaps there swept before his 
memory the picture drawn by Isaiah of the suffering 
Servant. His thought took one of those leaps which 
only come from a great inspiration. The only inci- 
dent in the New Testament at all comparable with it 
is the superb spiritual insight of Simon Peter (Mt. 
16:16). The simple words of John's magnificent 
recognition do not lend themselves to any para- 
phrase. When we realize the process by which he 
had gained this apprehension every syllable becomes 
weighty. "On the morrow he seeth Jesus coming 
unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, that 
taketh away the sin of the world! . . . And I 
have seen, and have borne witness that this is the 
Son of God'' (Jo. 1:29, 34). 

One of the noblest things we know of Mahomet is 
the incident related by Carlyle. "Ayesha, his young 
favorite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished her- 
self among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, 
through her whole long life; this young brilliant 
Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: 'Now, am I 
not better than Kadijah? She was a widow, old, and 
had lost her looks; you love me better than you did 



The Recognition of Jesus 23 

her?' — l No, by Allah!' answered Mahomet. 'No, by 
Allah! She believed in me when none else would 
believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, 
and she w r as that! ' " 

In John the Baptist, Jesus found the man who be- 
lieved in Him, the man who had the spiritual insight 
to discern His nature and understand His mission. 
The kingdom of Jesus Christ was founded in the earth 
on the day when John the Baptist proclaimed that 
Jesus was the Lamb of God, and the Son of God. 

After one great soul had come to believe in Jesus 
by such ways as we have indicated, the winning of 
other souls was comparatively easy. In these high 
spiritual things the gospel narrative fits into human 
experiences on lower ranges, as the hand fits into the 
well-worn glove. The testimony of the Baptist led 
Andrew, and another — perhaps John, the writer of 
this gospel — to seek Jesus, and to accept His invita- 
tion to spend the day with Him. Andrew in turn 
introduced his brother Simon to Jesus, and then 
Philip, and Philip in turn Nathanael. How natural 
it is! How the Evangel fits into the grooves of human 
relationships, of family ties, of friendly associations, 
of human acquaintance! 

The significant thing, however, in the story, and 
the one we are so apt to overlook, is that these friends 
did not impart to each other the conviction that 
Jesus was the Christ. They left Him to do that. 
What they did was to bring their friends into relation- 
ship with Jesus, so that they might see and hear Him. 
How easy it was for Him to make His own impres- 
sion! The two friends spend the day with Him. We 
do not know a word of the conversation, but we know 
that the next day Andrew told his brother: "We 
have found the Messiah." Jesus looked upon Simon 
and read his character so truly that the man's inner 
self responded to its Master. Philip needed only a 
word to attach himself to Jesus. Nathanael was so 



24 The Great Ministry 

overwhelmed with Jesus' knowledge of him that his 
conviction gushed forth in a great confession. Jesus 
did it all. The very least was the work of men. 

To-day we often say, Conditions are not the same. 
We cannot bring men to Jesus to-day, and let Him 
make His impression upon them. All that men see 
of Jesus is what is revealed of Him in His disciples. 
There is some truth in such statements, but not so 
much as is often supposed. The very best men are 
poor reflections of the Master. And if the world is 
to be turned to Christ by the absolute Christ-likeness 
of the average Christian the enterprise is even more 
hopeless than the most discouraged have believed. 
But the truth is that conditions are not essentially 
different to-day and then. The essential thing, then 
and now, is that the disciple, while openly confessing 
his own failure to represent Christ worthily, and 
lamenting it, should bear an honest, sincere witness 
as to his own conviction about Christ. And in the 
secret places of his own heart the man who has been 
led to seek Christ by a human witness, as Andrew was 
by the witness of the Baptist, or Philip by the witness 
of Nathanael, may find Him, and receive his convic- 
tions directly from Him. The great function of 
Christian service is witness-bearing to Jesus Christ, 
and in that service we are indeed poor Christians if 
our appreciation of Him and our witness to Him do 
not far surpass any image of Him shown as yet in 
our own lives. 

The miracle at the wedding feast at Cana, which 
the Evangelist puts into immediate connection with 
the impression Jesus made upon those whom their 
friends introduced to Him, illustrates in at least two 
ways His attitude toward men. On the one hand, it 
shows His unselfishness. He who a few days before 
would not exercise His divine power to transform 
stones into bread to appease His hunger, transformed 
water into wine to save His hosts from the chagrin of 



The Recognition of Jesus 



25 



having provided insufficient entertainment. And, on 
the other hand, his readiness to work a miracle for 
such a purpose conclusively shows the extent and 
delicacy of His sympathy. It is not surprising that 
He should exert His divine power to restore Lazarus 
to the stricken sisters. It would be a hard heart that 




Cana of Galilee. 

The Greek church with the dome on the extreme left of the picture covers the supposed 6ite 
of the house in which the marriage feast took place. 



would not respond to such a call, but, when He 
wrought a miracle to save his host from the mortifica- 
tion of a failure in etiquette, He manifested a delicacy 
of sympathy and insight Avhich makes us believe 
that no human need or even embarrassment is beyond 
the range of His care. No wonder that John said of 
this miracle that it ''manifested his glory; and his 
disciples believed on him" (Jo. 2:11). 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Beginning of the Public Ministry. 

Jo. 2:13—3:21. 

Thus far the influence of Jesus had been confined to 
a very narrow, we might almost call it a home circle. 
The young men who attached themselves to Him were 
mutual friends, and the miracle at the wedding feast 
in Cana, at which it appears that the entire group of 
the relatives and acquaintances of Jesus were present, 
only appealed to this small company of intimates. 

It is always an important day for a young man con- 
cerning whose powers his close friends entertain a 
high estimate, when he goes forth into actual life. 
He will not find the world so sympathetic and believ- 




The Temple Area in the Time of Christ. 

From Selous' picture of Jerusalem in its Grandeur. 

ing as the home circle has been. He will have to 
prove his capacity; nothing will be taken on trust. 
And, if he makes claims for himself, they will be 
vigorously contested. In the narrative before us we 
see Jesus, as a young man, going forth into actual 
life to meet the verdict of the world upon Himself. 
After the wedding there seems to have been a kind 

26 



The Beginning of the Public Ministry 2 7 

of family reunion at Capernaum (Jo. 2:12), and 
immediately following that, Jesus went up to the 
great national feast of the passover at Jerusalem. 
An occasion soon presented itself in which He stood 
forth as the central figure. There was nothing forced 
about the situation. What He saw in the temple 
aroused His indignation, and He could not be true to 
Himself and refrain from a protest. We need not 
suppose that there was any intentional sacrilege on 
the part of the priests in allowing the sheep and oxen 
for sacrifice, and the tables of the money changers to 
obtrude into the court of the Gentiles. It was a 
great convenience to the Jews from a distance to buy 
their offerings and to exchange their foreign coins near 
the temple. The encroachment upon the court prob- 
ably had been gradual, and the slow growth of the 
custom had blinded the eyes of the authorities to its 
moral significance. It was an illustration of how 
easily a practice, perfectly defensible in itself, may 
become intolerable, because of the way it encroaches 
upon and supersedes a nobler use. So now business 
may encroach upon the day of worship, or purely 
commercial standards upon the sanctities of the 
home. Jesus felt at once an intense moral revolt 
against this sacrilegious use of God's house. His 
conduct in driving out the sheep and oxen, and over- 
turning the tables of the money changers was an act 
against which even those most seriously affected felt 
that no protest was possible. They did not attempt 
to defend the practice, they only questioned His par- 
ticular authority to institute this necessary reform. 
The reply of Jesus to this question could hardly have 
been understood by those to whom it was addressed 
(Jo. 2:19). His answer was the instant overflowing 
of His Messianic consciousness. Subsequent events, 
however, were to make His defense perfectly clear to 
His disciples and to the world (Jo. 2:22). 

The record appears to indicate that the cleansing 



28 The Great Ministry 

of the temple was followed by some "signs" concern- 
ing which we are not informed, that inclined many to 
believe on Him. In the narrative, however, describ- 
ing the interview with Nicodemus we have a large 
and deep insight as to Jesus' conception of His mis- 
sion and the principles that controlled His subse- 
quent action. 

It is not necessary to suppose that Nicodemus came 
to our Lord by night through cowardice. He ap- 
pears to have been actuated by an honest desire to 
know more about Jesus before committing himself to 
His cause. Certainly his subsequent course shows no 
want of courage (Jo. 7:50,51 ; 19:39). Jesus struck 
at once at the heart of the difficulty that a master 
in Israel would feel as to His message. Nicodemus 
naturally thought that one who, out of the heart of 
Judaism, proclaimed the kingdom of God, would be 
eager to grant special privileges to a man who stood 
as high as himself in the nation. In the first sentence 
of Jesus there is a distinct reminiscence of the message 
of John the Baptist, which Jesus had endorsed by 
receiving baptism at his hands. John had declared 
that Abrahamic descent did not qualify one for mem- 
bership in the kingdom of God, but that personal 
righteousness, springing out of repentance, was 
requisite. Now Jesus says that a radical reconstruc- 
tion of character, such as is implied in the figure of a 
new birth, is essential. Nicodemus was willing to go 
back to Abraham for his title to enter the kingdom of 
God. Jesus said he must go back further than that; 
he must go back to God. The only heredity that 
avails in the kingdom of God is an immediate filial 
relationship to God Himself. Jesus did not attempt 
to explain the means by which this mighty change 
was wrought in the souls of men. He compares the 
action of God's spirit to the movement of the wind. 
The point of the comparison is the mystery of the 
wind, not its capriciousness or uncertainty; for 



The Beginning of the Public Ministry 29 

nothing can be more certain than that the air is 
always in movement, however little we may under- 
stand its laws. 

And yet, a deeper study of this conversation reveals 
that Jesus answered the very question that lay behind 
the thought of Nicodemus. He did not tell him the 
precise philosophy of the great spiritual change upon 
which He was insisting — "How can these things be?" 
— but He did tell him, in no ambiguous words, how 
he, and all men, might experience this change. He 
told Nicodemus that the filial relationship to God was 
formed between a human heart and God, when the 
soul of man entertained toward Jesus Himself the 
attitude of loving self-surrender, which is so inade- 
quately represented by our English words "belief" 
and "believe." Martin Luther used to call the 
answer of Jesus to Nicodemus "the little Bible. " He 
declared that that single sentence was enough to save 
the world. What Jesus said was, God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son that who- 
soever commits himself in loving surrender to Him 
might have eternal life. He has just been speaking 
of a divine life issuing in a new birth. It is mys- 
terious, He has said, but there is nothing capricious 
or uncertain about it. It is gained by loving self- 
surrender to Me — the Son of God. Through Me the 
filial relationship with God is established. The life 
of God — "eternal life" — enters the human soul, and 
the soul itself is conformed to the principle of a 
divine heredity. 

Two things especially reward attention in this con- 
nection. One is that the claims of Jesus with refer- 
ence to His own nature become most impressive not 
when they are explicitly stated, but when, as in this 
conversation, they are seen to underlie and give 
consistence to the whole order of thought. Nothing 
that could be said about Jesus, or that He could say 
about Himself, could be so impressive as the majestic 



30 The Great Ministry 

assumption that filial relationship to the Most High 
is effected by loving self-surrender to Jesus. 

Another significant thing is that at the very out- 
set of His public ministry the great normative ideas 
of Jesus about the kingdom of God, His own mission 
and Himself were distinct and complete. Whatever 
development there may have been in His thought 
took place before He entered upon His public work. 
Indeed, we go back to that conversation with Nico- 
demus for the clearest light upon some of His later 
utterances. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

True Religion and True Worship. 

Jo. 3:22—4:42. 

Following Jesus' interview with Nicodemus, the 
Evangelist gives us a glimpse of the state of mind of 
John the Baptist, now that Jesus was actually enter- 
ing upon His public ministry. This glimpse is 
entirely creditable to John. It enhances the high 
esteem of his character arising from a study of the 
reports of his sermons and of his previous attitude 
toward Jesus. Even admitting that the passage Jo. 
3:31-35 is a reflection of the author of the gospel 
rather than a summary of the witness of John, his 
undoubted testimony to Jesus (3:27-30) indicates 
penetrating spiritual insight and an absence of self- 
conceit which are the unfailing marks of a great 
nature. 

The opposition aroused by Jesus' cleansing of the 
temple, which was sharpened by the increase of His 
followers (4:1, 2), led Him to withdraw from the 
neighborhood of Jerusalem, and return to the district 
of His boyhood. On His way through Samaria to 
Galilee there occurred an episode which shows how a 
human soul which at almost every point was in 
sharp contrast with the spirit of Nicodemus, was led 
to recognize Him. 

Nicodemus, like the merchant seeking goodly pearls 
(Mt. 13:45, 46), came to Jesus with a clear intent; 
the woman of Samaria, like the man who found the 
hidden treasure (Mt. 13 :44) , met our Lord by accident. 
Nicodemus was proud of his lineage and position, 
and probably had led a clean life; the woman of 
Samaria was an evident sinner, and knew that she 
had nothing to exult in. There was something a 
trifle hard and austere about Nicodemus, whose re- 

31 



32 



The Great Ministry 



spectability and intellectuality perhaps had alienated 
him somewhat from a quick sympathy with the or- 
dinary run of human experience; the woman of Sa- 
maria, like those who are most tempted through their 
affections, was responsive to every variation of 
thought and feeling in those about her. The truth 

that Nicodemus needs 
is the imperative state- 
ment of the necessity of 
a new life: the woman 
of Samaria knows that 
through the self-knowl- 
edge which has come in 
scattered moments of re- 
flection. The truth she 
needs is some knowl- 
edge of "the Father" 
and of His gift that will 
be like a pure fountain 
in her heart. 

If the author of the 
fourth gospel had done 

The Vault and Mouth of Jacob's Well. nothi more than to 

The mouth of the well is now several feet ■, 1 11 r 

below the surface of the ground in a small Jiang in tile gallery OI 

vaulted chamber. The well is now about sev- * 1 

enty-five feet deep, although originally it was JlUman memory the pOr- 

much deeper. . .. r , i 

trait of the sagacious 
and upright master of Israel and of the affectionate 
and sinful daughter of Samaria, who both came to 
a recognition of Jesus, he would have rendered an 
inestimable service to the interpretation of the 
gospel, and to the promotion of the spiritual life. 
The types are extreme, and between them there lies 
the entire range of possible human experience. The 
universality of the Christian faith hardly needs any 
other vindication. 

The tact and insight of Jesus, and His success in 
making this woman share His own spiritual eleva- 
tion, have been generally recognized, not only by 




True Religion and True Worship 33 

devout Christians, but by students of life and litera- 
ture. We feel, as we ponder the narrative and come 
to sympathize with the point of view of Jesus and 
the woman, and then trace the order of thought and 
the fluctuations of feeling in both minds, that in 
Jesus we are brought into contact with a knowledge 
of the human soul and of God that simply encompasses 
us. It sweeps so far beneath and over our concep- 
tions that its orbit instead of finding a limitation in 
our horizon expands it. Countless readers of this 
chapter have arisen from it asking the question that 
flew unbidden, through a swift spiritual intuition, to 
the lips of this woman: "Can this be the Christ ?" 

And yet, though there is such contrariety in the 
circumstances, character, and disposition of Nicode- 
mus and the woman of Samaria, there is an under- 
lying unity in the message of Jesus to both. He did 
not tell Nicodemus how the life of God entered a 
human soul, but He told him that he could gain that 
life by loving self-surrender to Himself, the Son of 
God. Through the channel of that relationship to 
Himself there would flow into his soul the "eternal 
life. " The message to the woman, dissimilar though 
it was in figure and form, was not different. He 
spoke to her of the gift of God, a satisfying fountain 
of eternal life in the heart, which He would give to 
the one asking for it (Jo. 4:14). There are different 
metaphors in the two conversations, but the reality 
is the same. 

In our study of the conversation with Nicodemus 
we saw how there underlies it a majestic assumption 
as to the nature of Jesus. The same assumption 
underlies this conversation. In the interview with 
Nicodemus there is a clear note of the universality of 
the offer of eternal life (3:16), but in this interview 
that note sounds, if possible, even more clearly 
(4:10). 

The attempt of the woman to divert the thought 



34 The Great Ministry 

of Jesus into a new channel (4:19, 20) brings into 
view an unexpected sequence of His message as to the 
eternal life. Only that worship is acceptable to God 
which is rendered "in spirit and truth. " "The 
Father" must be worshiped by sons, by those who 
have the filial spirit, which is the manifestation of the 
"eternal life" in the soul of man. All questions of 
time or place or manner are trivial and irrelevant in 
comparison with the question, Have I the spirit 
which would make any worship of mine acceptable 
to God? We can hardly imagine a stronger emphasis 
upon the inwardness of religion. All forms, cere- 
monies, places, sink into insignificance in comparison 
with the utterance of the human heart which has 
received the "eternal life." The entire value of 
these externals is dependent upon their serving as 
media through which the filial heart expresses its 
adoration of "the Father." 

True religion is the "eternal life" in the soul of 
man; true worship is the expression of that life. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Jesus' Own View of His Mission. 

Mt. 4:12-17; Mk. 1:14, 15; Lu. 4:14-30; Jo. 4:43-54. 

The imprisonment of John the Baptist exerted a 
strong influence over the course of the ministry of 
Jesus. On the one hand, in connection with the hos- 
tility that had been aroused against Him in Judea, 
it led Him to withdraw into Galilee, making His head- 
quarters in Capernaum; on the other hand, it led 
Him to take up the precise message of John — "Repent 
ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" — and 
make it the burden of His preaching (comp. Mt. 3:2 
and 4:17), with the significant addition, which Mark 
has recorded, "and believe in the gospel" (1:15). 
These facts throw much light upon the genetic rela- 
tionship between the message of John and that of 
Jesus. Jesus endorsed the message of John by 
receiving baptism at his hands, and, when He came 
to preach, He added His own distinctive contribu- 
tion to what He had appropriated from His relative 
and forerunner. From this time the mission of Jesus 
swings entirely clear from that of John. The mes- 
sage and work of John are incorporated into the 
ministry of Jesus, who, on the basis of the prophetic 
teaching of Israel, builds up the majestic fabric of 
what we know as Christianity. 

The sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth com- 
pletely establishes the correctness of this view. His 
reading of the famous passage in Isaiah, which was 
universally construed as Messianic, and His declara- 
tion,, "To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in 
your ears," was not only an implied claim that He 
was the Messiah, which His hearers appear to have 
understood perfectly, but it also indicated His own 
conception of His mission as the Messiah. 

35 



36 The Great Ministry 

"He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor: 
He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives. 
And recovering of sight to the blind, 
To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

— Lu. 4:18, 19. 

We now see clearly the new strand which Jesus 
wove with the teaching of the Baptist. John per- 
petuated the message of Jeremiah and Ezekiel that 
personal righteousness was the only ground of accept- 
ance with God. Jesus perpetuated the message of 
Isaiah that God provides for man a redemption which 
he is not competent to achieve for himself. Both of 
these messages run through the historic discipline of 
Israel. The first culminates in the great declaration 
of the law of Jehovah, the second in the offerings for 
sin looking forward to the Messianic fulfilment. Jesus 
emphasized the first as strongly as the Baptist, but 
He did what the Baptist did not and could not do, He 
preached a Gospel, a message not of condemnation, 
but of good tidings (Jo. 3:17). He could declare 
that a redemption from sin to righteousness, more 
complete than any commandment keeping, was at- 
tainable because of what He Himself could do for man. 

The conception of sin which underlies Jesus' an- 
nouncement of His mission is most important. The 
quotation from Isaiah shows that He regards it as 
something foreign to the true nature of man. It is 
a poverty which deprives him of his rightful resources ; 
it is a captivity which binds his faculties; it is a 
blindness which closes his eyes and shuts out the 
whole beautiful world; it is a wound that cripples. 
And, conversely, the purpose of Jesus is to restore 
men to themselves ; to make the poor rich ; to release 
the captives; to restore sight; to make the cripple 
whole. In the thought of Jesus His mission is eman- 
cipation, restoration, deliverance. The Gospel is glad 
tidings to those who are poor, captive, blind and 
crippled by the power of sin. 



Jesus ' Own View of His Mission 



37 



We have gone a long way in straight thinking 
about the most important problems of human life 
when we look at sin and redemption from this point 
of view of Jesus. Sin does not enrich, expand, or 
ennoble human life; it makes it poor and small and 
mean. Sin is acting as we were not made to act. If 
you bend a finger backward until the joint snaps, you 
are sinning against the law 
and nature of that finger. 
That is what we do with 
our faculties and powers 
when we make them the 
" servants of sin" (Rom. 6: 
20). And we put the em- 
phasis where it belongs, 
and the mission of Jesus 
in the right perspective, 
when we see that salvation 
means power, health and 
emancipation from all of 
the forces alien to man's 
real nature. 

But there was more even 
than this in the discourse 

at Nazareth. The course of thought seems to 
this: Jesus imagines a critic of His claim as saying, 
"If you are the Messiah do here some of the wonders 
you are reported to have done at Capernaum. " He 
replies to this demand by citing the incidents in the 
lives of Elijah and Elisha when they wrought miracles 
of help for foreigners, though there were many equally 
helpless and worthy in Israel (1 Ki. 17:8-16; 2 Ki. 
5:1-14). This reply reminds us of the teaching of 
John the Baptist that the blessings of the kingdom 
are not given by favoritism to a specific people, that 
Abrahamic descent confers no title to them (Mt. 3:9). 
Thus Jesus makes His answer to a criticism that was 
constantly present in the minds of His townsfolk — 




The Cliff at Nazareth. 
One of the sites pointed out as the clifi of 
precipitation. 

of thought seems to be 



38 The Great Ministry 

who had known Him from youth, and could only 
associate Him with the village carpenter shop — an 
implication that His mission is to the whole race of 
mankind. The " whosoever' ' of the interview with 
Nicodemus (Jo. 3:16) is not a mere rhetorical flourish. 
At the very beginning of His ministry Jesus struck 
the note of universality, and we hear it clearly again 
in this early discourse at Nazareth. 

The mission of Jesus, as He conceived it, was to 
liberate the souls of all men from the captivity of sin. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Early Self-revelation of Jesus. 

Mk. 1:16-45; Lu. 5:1-11. 

After Nazareth, the town of the boyhood of Jesus, 
had rejected Him, He made His headquarters in the 
rich and populous city of Capernaum, which was sit- 
uated on the northern shore of the beautiful Lake of 
Gennesaret. This lake is about thirteen miles long 
and less than seven wide. The great caravan route 
from the East to the Mediterranean ran along the 
northern coast, probably near Capernaum, and several 




Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee. 

considerable cities and hundreds of villas of wealthy 
officials and merchants were scattered along its shores. 
What might be called the native or Hebrew basis of 
the population demonstrated in the great struggle with 
Rome, a.d. 66-70, that it had unusual vigor, courage 
and devotion. The foreign elements in this region, 
whether Greek, Roman or Asiatic, represented wealth 
and culture of no ordinary kind. Altogether Galilee 
was probably one of the most attractive sections in 
Western Asia. The people were of sound stock, and 
the region was a center of a rich and cosmopolitan 
civilization. 

39 



40 The Great Ministry 

One of the first steps of Jesus after He had estab- 
lished Himself at Capernaum was to select the men 
who were to be His most intimate companions and 
helpers in His widening ministry. He naturally- 
turned to the little group of acquaintances He had 
made a few months before. Some of them were en- 
gaged in the fishing industry upon the lake. These 
He sought out and asked them to attach themselves 
permanently to Him. The heartiness with which 
they responded to this request indicates the deep 
impression He made upon them at the beginning of 
the acquaintance, an account of which is preserved 
in Mark's gospel (Mk. 1:16-20). 

It is a mistake to represent these disciples, or, for 
that matter, any of the original Twelve, as vagabonds, 
or as poor men, representing the proletariat of Galilee. 
On the contrary, they belonged to the self-respecting 
middle class which was the backbone of the popula- 
tion, and they came from households that appear to 
have been comparatively well-to-do. These men may 
have lacked the social polish that was common among 
the elite of the Graeco-Roman circles of Galilee; like 
Chalmers and Carlyle they never lost the burr of 
their mother-tongue (Mk. 14:70) but they were 
sturdy, sensible and trustworthy. 

The effect upon these men of the great catch of 
fishes which they made by following the directions of 
Jesus, seems to have been twofold. The fact that 
they had toiled with all their skill throughout the 
night fruitlessly, but now, in obeying Him, had been 
wonderfulfy successful, taught them in a flash that 
in abandoning their own resources for His sake they 
had allied themselves with infinite riches. The more 
important thing, however, was that Peter saw at 
once in this surprising event such a disclosure of the 
divine nature of Jesus that he came to a profound 
apprehension of his own moral unworthiness. That 
is the precise connection between the wonderful 



The Early Self-revelation of Jesus 41 

catch of fishes and the cry of Peter: "Depart from 
me; for I am a sinful man, Lord" (Lu. 5:8). And 
yet we find that Peter and the rest, "when they had 
brought their boats to land, . . . left all and 
followed him" (Lu. 5:11). 

How marvelously true this is to the common 
Christian experience! The disclosure of Christ's 
nature, which at first repels because it reveals men 
to themselves in their unworthiness, speaks to some- 
thing so deep and vital in the human spirit that they 
cannot go from Him. The first repulsion gives way 
to an irresistible attraction, and they are glad to 
leave all and follow Him. Henceforth the four men 
who shared this experience identified themselves 
indissolubly with the fortunes of Jesus. 

Immediately, perhaps the same day, the ministry 
of Jesus widened to its full extent in Galilee. The 
events crowd upon one another. The discourse in 
the synagogue at Capernaum, during which He made 
the impression that, in contrast with the religious 
teachers of the time, who interpreted the words of 
others, He spoke with original authority (Mk. 1:22); 
the command to the unclean spirit (vs. 25); the 
healing of Simon's wife's mother (vss. 29-31), and the 
restoration to health of many afflicted persons (vss. 
32-34) were all events that might have imparted to 
the people the conviction that had so powerfully 
impressed Peter and his companions that they had 
left all to follow Him. But evidently this impression 
was not made upon the masses. Curiosity, gratitude, 
and a desire for further benefits were aroused, but 
not that deeper moral conviction which attaches the 
soul to Christ. The occurrences of the following 
days seem to have widened the circle of these emo- 
tions (vss. 35-45) without deepening them. The real 
problem was to make the conviction and experience 
of Peter and his companions the conviction and 
experience of all those to whom similar disclosures 



42 The Great Ministry 

were granted. A little later Jesus explained the 
comparative failure of His mission by a parable 
drawn from the usual disappointments of farmers 
(Mt. 13:3-9, 18-23). The point is that the seed tests 
the soil as truly as the soil tests the seed. 

Already, at the very outset of Jesus' ministry, it was 
becoming evident that teaching and deeds of mercy, 
even when accompanied by the most remarkable dis- 
plays of divine authority, were not sufficient to win 
the deep and permanent allegiance of the masses of 
mankind. Only the fullest revelation of the divine 
nature could do that. 



CHAPTER XL 

The Fidelity of Jesus to Himself. 

Mk. 2:1-22. 

Inevitably, the nature, the ideas and the purposes 
of Jesus led to words and actions that aroused hos- 
tility. It was simply impossible for Jesus to be true 
to Himself and avoid this. There are some differences 
that no tact or diplomacy can smooth over or obliter- 
ate. Such were the differences between Jesus and 
the ideas and practices of the Roman-Hebrew world 
of Palestine. These differences probably would have 
been as marked if He had appeared in the midst of 
any other civilization, but those which developed in 
Palestine are thoroughly typical of the antagonism 
between Jesus and what the writer of the fourth 
gospel calls "the world," by which he means the 
organized principles and practices of men. 

In Galilee this antagonism, to Jesus was based on 
three grounds, which are vividly brought before us in 
the second chapter of Mark's gospel (vss. 1-22). 

In the first place the leaders of the people, those 
who by their position and influence set the tone of 
public opinion, resented at once and bitterly His 
claim to exercise the divine prerogative to forgive 
sins. The issue arose naturally in the course of 
events. When the friends of the paralytic let him 
down through the roof of the Oriental house into the 
presence of Jesus, He resolved to give this poor 
cripple the largest of all blessings. Jesus was very 
far from teaching that all suffering could be attri- 
buted to specific sins (Jo. 9:3), but some diseases 
certainly can be so traced. And this man's paralysis 
was probably an instance of that fact. Jesus, there- 
fore, went back of the disease to that of which it 
was the token, and said, "Son, thy sins are forgiven." 

43 



44 The Great Ministry 

There was nothing strained or forced about this decla- 
ration, which indicated, as the scribes at once saw, 
that He attributed to Himself a divine prerogative. 
The assumption of Jesus was as congruous to His 
consciousness as the bestowal of an incredibly large 
gift would be to the consciousness of the possessor of 
enormous wealth. 

Jesus at once accepted the unspoken challenge. 
He recognized the soundness of the reasoning of His 
critics that His declaration to the paralytic was equiv- 
alent to an assertion of His own deity. It is so, He 
said, That is the claim I make; and to vindicate the 
rightfulness of the claim He healed the paralytic. In 
the very nature of the case, Jesus' critics could not tell 
whether His claim to forgive sins was anything more 
than an empty boast. They had no conceivable 
tests to apply in that realm, but they could tell 
whether or not the paralytic had been healed, and the 
manifestation by Jesus of the divine power in one 
realm was an evidence that He had the divine pre- 
rogative in another. It is not in the least surprising 
that this claim and its vindication should have 
aroused against Jesus an unrelenting hostility. He 
was not the Messiah of whom they had dreamed, 
and the very conclusiveness of the evidence that He 
had the prerogative of the Most High embittered 
them the more. 

The hostility that grew out of the relations of Jesus 
with men on the broad plane of their humanity was 
equally inevitable. Just as His consciousness of His 
own nature and power was certain to reveal itself, 
so was the point of view from which He looked at 
humanity, and the standard of values by which he 
appraised men. Under all sorts of civilizations men 
have estimated their fellows by purely adventitious 
standards — by their birth, or wealth or supposed 
wisdom. Under the dominion of these notions men 
are divided into classes, designated by certain labels, 



The Fidelity of Jesus to Himself 45 

and are adjudged as worthy or not, according to these 
distinctions. Jesus' estimate of men was entirely 
independent of such considerations. He saw the 
intrinsic worth of the human personality because it 
was created in the divine image. The usual discrimi- 
nations that prevail among men were meaningless 
to Him. "When Jesus began to act upon these con- 
victions He was certain to arouse an enormous social 
prejudice, for there are few things about which men 
are more sensitive than social distinction. The 
moment He threw His growing prestige in favor of 
ignoring social lines He had arrayed against Him in 
a solid mass all those classes whose peculiar privileges 
He failed to recognize. The choice of the first dis- 
ciples did not arouse any prejudice against Him or 
His ideas; but when He chose Levi, a publican, and 
attended the supper which apparently Levi gave to 
his old friends before entering into the closest fellow- 
ship with the other disciples, the harm was done (Mk. 
2:16). The answ r er that Jesus made to the rebuke 
that He violated social conventions (Mk. 2:17) indi- 
cates that His interest and sympathy "went out in a 
peculiar way to those who were less privileged. 

We can see too that the indifference of Jesus to the 
mere externals of religion augmented the opposition 
that grew out of His claims and His democratic tem- 
per. It was impossible that He should regulate His 
own conduct or that of His disciples by the wire- 
drawn inferences of rabbinic reasoning upon the law. 
He and they must be free to act from the higher 
laws that grow out of fresh, vital experiences (Mk. 
2:19). A tactful accommodation on the part of Jesus 
to religious prejudice might have led Him to enjoin 
fasting upon His disciples, but since Jesus did not 
believe that the practice had any particular value, 
He would not take that insincere course. Further- 
more, the differences between Jesus and the men of 
His time were so radical that any attempt to patch 



46 The Great Ministry 

them up would be futile. The new cloth could not 
be sewn on the old garment to advantage; the old 
wine-skins were not suitable for the new wine (Mk. 
2:21,22). 

Jesus could make very little use of the shrewd, 
tactful diplomatist with his unbounded faith in 
adroit concessions and vague phrases. The antago- 
nism between His claims, His ideas of man, and of 
religion, and the prejudices, principles and practices 
of the world in which He moved were radical and 
fundamental. Jesus did not flaunt these differences, 
but, on the other hand, He did not conceal them. 
He let the antagonism to Himself develop as it would. 
He gives us the unsurpassed example of fidelity to 
oneself. 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Rights of the Soul. 

Mt. 12:1-14; Jo. 5:1-18 

The attitude of Jesus toward the Hebrew Sabbath 
figures very largely in the accounts of the antagonism 
to Him which finally culminated in His crucifixion. 
Was this the real cause of the strengthening oppo- 
sition to Him, or did the leaders of public opinion 
skilfully use His disregard of the Sabbatic customs 
of the time as a convenient means of arousing against 
Him a strong religious prejudice? 

The careful student of the narratives will be apt 
to conclude that there is truth in both the answers 
these questions suggest. On the one hand, the rulers 
acquired a violent 
and more or less 
sincere prejudice 
against Him be- 
cause of the free- 
dom with which 
He treated the Sab- 
bath; on the other 
hand, behind this 
prejudice, and 
doubtless contrib- 
uting strongly to it, 
was a consciousness 

that JeSUS did not Entrance to the Virgin's Fountain. 

"h^1 n-n <y fr* t "h <=>i r r\rr\ ^r • ® n t1ie southern slope of the temple mount, and consid- 
UClUllg LU LllCll U1UC1 , ered by some as the site of the Pool of Bethesda. 

that He represented 

a different spirit, a different type of ideas, a different 
attitude toward life than their own. One manifes- 
tation of that difference was the way He treated the 
Sabbath, but His practice as to the Sabbath was not 
of itself sufficient to arouse their deadly hostility. 

47 




From "TheBiLlical ttorid.' 



48 The Great Ministry 

They made so much of this as a handle against Him 
because His position upon this matter was typical 
of the real differences between Him and them, and 
because the charge that He was a Sabbath breaker 
was a good label to fasten on Him to arouse Jewish 
prejudice. The general correctness of this position 
is confirmed by the fact that where they can bring 
the charge of blasphemy against Him, with some 
color of excuse, they drop the accusation of Sabbath 
breaking, and dwell on the new charge. We can 
actually see the point at which the two charges are 
coupled and the second becomes predominant (Jo. 
5:18). 

Three incidents set before us the attitude of Jesus 
as to the Sabbath. He heals a man with an infirmity 
at the Pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath day (Jo. 
5:1-9) ; He heals a man with a withered hand in the 
synagogue on a later Sabbath (Mt. 12:9-13), and He 
does not condemn His disciples for a violation of the 
well-understood Sabbath law (Mt. 12:3-8). 

Two most important questions arise just here: The 
first is, why did not Jesus regard the customs and 
prejudices of the Jews in this matter? Why did He, 
by His independent course, expose Himself to a 
criticism that many would regard as just, and give 
His enemies a handle against Him? Why did He not, 
as society people would say, show more "tact," and 
not affront a prejudice? Why did He not, as the 
literalist interpreters of Paul would say, have regard 
to the weak consciences of His countrymen? 

The moment you seek a real answer to such legiti- 
mate questions you are confronted by the fact that 
the social requirement of tact, or the moral principle 
of deference to weak consciences has important limi- 
tations. The conduct of Jesus perfectly illustrates 
them. There is a law of independent loyalty to one's 
own principles which is absolutely supreme over the 
law of accommodation. There is a limit beyond which 



The Rights of the Soul 49 

prejudices have no right to lay down the law for the 
conduct of those who are free from them. There is 
a point at which the so-called "weak conscience" 
demonstrates, by the very vigor w T ith which it lays 
down the law, that it does not belong in the category 
of the weak. 

This consideration throws much light upon an 
aspect of our Lord's character which has been far 
too often overlooked. He is the one in whom thor- 
ough-going manliness reaches its ideal development. 
He is the courageous, independent soul because He 
is self -convinced, knows His own principles, is thor- 
oughly loyal to them and does not shrink from the 
hostilities that loyalty may provoke. We utterly 
misinterpret the Christian attitude when we make 
our Lord's caution against offending ''one of these 
little ones" (Mt. 18:6) an excuse for our cowardice 
for not bearing manly witness to our convictions. 
Jesus did not affront the notions of His contempo- 
raries for the sake of showing His independence; but 
He was independent and submitted to the results of 
that course, because He must be true to Himself, to 
His own principles, ideals and mission. 

A second important question is this: What was 
Jesus' doctrine of the Sabbath? A study of the 
three answers He gave His critics shows clearly that 
He based His doctrine upon the fact that the purpose 
of the divine law is the good of man. God does not 
enjoin the Sabbath law for His own sake. He does 
not cease in acts of beneficence on the seventh day 
(Jo. 5:17, 18). There is a gradation in the authority 
of laws. The Sabbath law must yield to the dictates 
of human need (Mt. 12:11-13), and to the demands 
of humanity (Mt. 12:3-7). The unifying principle of 
these answers is the w r orth of the human personality 
to which the law ministers. "The Sabbath was 
made for man." And the right use of the Sabbath 
day is to use it for the promotion of the noblest 



50 The Great Ministry 

interests of man. The specific ways in which it shall 
be used must be left to the Christian perception of 
the fitness of things, to common sense, to the dictates 
of the spiritual life. Spiritually minded men will 
always use it worthily; unspiritual men will be apt 
to slight its privilege. 

The fundamental truth that Jesus enunciates in 
this connection hardly touches the modern question 
of Sunday legislation by the civil authority. The 
principle of the separation of church and state, which 
is so clearly involved in the teachings of the New 
Testament, forbids the enactment of Sunday laws 
on distinctively religious grounds, but it does not 
forbid the protection of those who would use the day 
for the highest ends, and, if the state has a right to 
prohibit child labor, and to fix the hours of organized 
labor, it has a right to prohibit organized labor on 
this day. The state may, without trenching upon 
the functions of the church, secure to every man a 
day of rest. The way a man uses the day of rest is 
the outcome of his spiritual life.* 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Discerning the Lord. 
Review of Chapters I-XII. 

An ancient Hebrew prophecy had declared that 
when the Messiah appeared men would not recognize 
Him (Is. 53:2, 3). Certainly this anticipation was 
abundantly fulfilled in the career of Jesus. The pri- 
mary reason why the contemporaries of Jesus failed to 
discern His nature and office was that they grossly 
misconceived the realm in which His sovereignty was 
to be exercised. They were by no means stupid or 
unresponsive men, but they were misled by their 
preconception that political, external dominion was 
the peculiar function of the Messiah. And because 
all their mental processes started from this false 
assumption their very devotion to the Mosaic law, as 
historically interpreted, blinded their eyes to the 
character of Jesus. This comes out very clearly in 
the course of the Sabbath controversy which plays 
such an important part in their rejection of Him. 
The simple fact that Jesus did not honor the Sabbath 
as they thought it ought to be honored invalidated 
His claim in their eyes (Jo. 9:16). 

The realm of the Messiah, however, is not primarily 
that of political or material sovereignties, though 
these were to be profoundly influenced and ultimately 
transformed by Him; His realm was that of character, 
of spiritual experiences, of soul relationships to God. 
Inevitably, therefore, they sought for the evidences of 
His Messiahship in the wrong domain. They were 
like those who would require an artist to demonstrate 
his power by the tests of mechanics. 

Even if the contemporaries of Jesus had appre- 
hended much more adequately the forecasts of the 
great prophets, it does not follow that they would 

51 



52 The Great Ministry 

have understood Jesus at once, for in our judgments 
of character, just as in our appreciation of music 
or painting, we are profoundly influenced by conven- 
tional standards. It required the insight of Ruskin 
to discern and disclose to modern England the superb 
genius of Turner. Only a delicate moral sense 
responds to the nobler types of character, if they 
are uncommon. 

But there were some in Palestine who not only had 
sufficient insight to see that Jesus was a most unusual 
personality, but who also discerned in Him such a 
mass and height of moral excellence, dignity and 
beauty that, to use the words of His latest biographer, 
they could say, "We beheld his glory, glory as of the 
only begotten from the Father, full of grace and 
truth" (Jo. 1:14). The interior clue to the apprecia- 
tion of the fourth gospel is to bring every incident 
recorded in it under the light of the question: What, 
on the one hand, does it contribute to the self -dis- 
closure of Jesus, and what, on the other hand, does 
it reveal of the processes by which men came to a 
just apprehension of His personality? 

In our studies in the life of Jesus up to the formal 
choosing of the Twelve, the outstanding features are 
the blindness of the leaders of public opinion, under 
the influence of the causes just suggested, to the nature 
of Jesus, and the profound and happy insight by 
which a few choice spirits discerned His divine quality. 
The first to penetrate beneath the popular conventions 
of the time was Jesus' own relative, John the Baptist. 
At the very outset of the public ministry John recog- 
nized Jesus as the One whose way it was his own 
mission to prepare. He rose even to a loftier height 
of spiritual discernment, and declared that Jesus was 
both "the Lamb of God" and "the Son of God" (Jo. 
1:29-34). This witness was the starting point of 
further recognitions. It did not create them; but 
it propagated presumptions that made the insights, 



Discerning the Lord S3 

to which each person came for himself, the easier. 
And so we rind Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathan- 
ael, and probably John, coming at least to a partial 
discernment, which was strengthened and clarified 
when Jesus gave some of them a specific invitation 
to become His close companions (Mk. 1:16-20). 
Through the miraculous draft of fishes (Lu. 5:1-11) 
there seems to have flashed upon the minds of Peter 
and his companions a fresh and vivid revelation of 
the majestic personality of Jesus. The incident 
reminds one of that unsurpassed passage in Browning: 

" I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 
Anywhere, sky or sea, or world at all; 
But the night's black was burst through by a blaze, 
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore 
Through her whole length of mountain visible; 
There lay the city thick and plain with spires, 
And, like a ghost dis-shrouded, white the sea. 
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow." 

The case of Nathanael illustrates another type, and 
it is of extreme interest. He seems to have been a 
spiritually minded man, though his preconceptions 
and prejudices were all averse to Jesus, but the dis- 
closure of Jesus' knowledge of a trivial event wrought 
a sudden change in his convictions, and his clarified 
insight registered itself in a confession that is worthy 
of a place beside the consummate utterance of Simon 
Peter (Jo. 1:49; Mt. 16:16). We can trace the 
development of Peter's faith; Nathanael's was the 
product of an instant. Still further, the experience 
of Nicodemus and of the woman of Samaria illustrate 
a recognition of Jesus gained through a very full 
self -disclosure on His part. 

It is not clear to what extent those whom Jesus 
healed during this period apprehended His person- 
ality. Probably their ideas were confused. The 
important thing for us to notice is that the men who 



54 



The Great Ministry 



had the insight to recognize Him became the human 
founders of His kingdom. It is this recognition 
accompanied by loyalty to it which fills up the mean- 
ing of the great and mysterious word "faith. " 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Society of Jesus. 

Mk. 3:7-19a. 

The term "Society of Jesus" is the title of the 
most admired, most hated, and most powerful organi- 
zation in the Roman church. But the use of this 
name by Loyola, and the sinister associations that 
have clustered about it, should not blind us to the 
fact that it is one of the happiest designations of the 
Christian church, which is "a company and fellowship 
of faithful and holy people gathered in the name of 
Jesus Christ. " In our Lord's appointment of the 
Twelve we have the nucleus of the historic Christian 







Prom "Le«per photographs, " copyright, 19 l- 

The Horns of Hattin. 

The traditional place of the choosing of the Twelve and the Sermon on the Mount. 

church, and the ends for w T hich He gathered this 
society are the objects for which the church exists, 
namely, that its members may be developed in the 
Christian life, and that individually and collectively 
they may be the agents for diffusing that life. The 
means, too, by which the Twelve and the church 
accomplish their purposes are the same, namely, 
knowledge of Jesus, gained through His word and 

55 



56 The Great Ministry 

personal fellowship with Him, and obedience to His 
commands. 

About four months had elapsed since Jesus had 
summoned Peter, Andrew, James and John to leave 
all and follow Him. During those months many 
things had taken place. Jesus had wrought a series 
of miracles in Capernaum (Mk. 1:21-34); He had 
made a preaching tour of Galilee (Mk. 1:35-45); He 
had healed the paralytic (Mk. 2:12) and called Mat- 
thew to join the four previously chosen (Mk. 2: 
13-17). He had restored the infirm man at the Pool 
of Bethesda (Jo. ch. 5), and the man with a withered 
hand (Mk. 3:1-6), and He had engaged in the critical 
controversies about fasting and the Sabbath (Mk. 
2:18-22; 3:1-6). 

At the time when He added seven intimate com- 
panions to the five already chosen He was so widely 
known throughout the whole country that great 
crowds pressed about Him wherever He went (Mk. 
3:7-12), and the antagonism on the part of the higher 
ecclesiastics had so far developed that they had half 
formed a purpose — not to kill Him, that was a later 
development — in some way or other to put Him out 
of the way. It was evident that if the influence of 
Jesus was to be concentrated and perpetuated it 
must be through the organization of a larger number 
of companions who should get His full thought, 
catch His spirit and act with some degree of unity. 
The way Jesus met the emergency was to add seven 
to the five companions He already had. He lived 
with these friends and taught them much that He 
withheld from the crowds. He also suggested their 
future work, and gave them practice by sending 
them out on short preaching trips. 

The seven men who thus made up the full com- 
plement of the Tw r elve were not the equals in ability 
or character of the five previously chosen. Peter 
and John were men of real genius. There were rock- 



The Society of Jesus 5 7 

like elements in the former, in spite of his superficial 
waywardness and vacillation. If Peter wrote the 
first epistle attributed to him, and John is responsible 
for the fourth gospel, both men had literary power 
of the very first order. James had a certain com- 
bination of energy and passion with steadfastness, 
and Matthew appears to have had all the character- 
istics of a first-rate man of affairs. The first five 
were not to be despised in any list of the world's 
effective men. The second group of seven did not 
belong in the same class. They were simply sensible, 
good-hearted, average men. They belonged to the 
order of the two-talented, who make up the majority 
of any community, and are the substratum of ordinary 
civilized society. We must not, however, fall into 
the error of thinking of them as "unlearned and 
ignorant men." That was the characterization of 
a group of supercilious officials who thought that 
their technical knowledge was the only education 
worth having (Acts 4:13). It has always been dif- 
ficult to find a Jew who was "ignorant " in the modern 
sense, and certainly there were no ignorant Jews in 
Palestine during the first half century of our era. 
Perhaps at that time there w r ere few provinces of 
the Roman Empire which enjoyed so generous and 
widely diffused a culture as Palestine. 

Still, though it is not entirely easy from the point 
of view of worldly wisdom to justify the choice of 
the seven, we can see some reasons for Jesus' course, 
and it was magnificently vindicated by the event. 

For one thing, the qualities of human nature that 
are essential to make men effective agents in the 
diffusion of the Christian life are not the more bril- 
liant and showy endowments, but sincerity, common 
sense, and a certain integrity of mental and spiritual 
constitution. In the apostolic band there was a 
Peter and a John. The annals of Christian history 
are studded with names that represent superlative 



58 The Great Ministry 

genius and equipment. There have always been 
noble preachers, effective administrators, learned 
theologians, inspiring teachers and heroic mission- 
aries. But the roads along which the Christian life 
has advanced have been the ways of ordinary human 
relationships. The wholesome ties of family life, of 
neighborhood association, of business connection, 
have been the channels through which the honest 
heart, the firm conviction, the pure life have touched 
another life, and interpreted and commended the 
Gospel. A religion that could not take the average 
man and make him its preacher, even from the point 
of view of ordinary worldly forecast, had no likeli- 
hood of becoming a universal faith. A religion that 
can make both the group of five and the group of 
seven its effective heralds is stamped with the mark 
of universality. 

And how effectively the very composition of the 
Twelve taught the great primal lesson of brother- 
hood through a common relationship with the Master! 
These two groups, with all their peculiar differences, 
are mingled in the Twelve, and then we have such a 
contrast as that between the believing Nathanael 
and the doubting Thomas, or that between Matthew, 
the tax-gatherer, and Simon Zelotes, a fanatical 
hater of taxes and tax-collectors. Is there any 
power that will bring men to a recognition of their 
essential brotherhood, and then make the fact inter- 
pretative of their duties and inspire a readiness to 
perform them? That is a question that all Western 
civilization, with its clash of interests and parties 
and traditions, is asking to-day more urgently than 
ever. Does not the brotherhood which Jesus organ- 
ized of men of such different types and endowments 
and prejudices, which He unified in a common rela- 
tionship to Himself, suggest the only sufficient 
answer? 



CHAPTER XV. 

What is Righteousness? 
Mt. ch. 5. 

The choosing of the Twelve was naturally followed 
by our Lord's clear, detailed, definite statement of 
His leading ideas and purposes. This exposition is the 
so-called "Sermon on the Mount." It was spoken 
to the disciples, possibly only to the Twelve, but the 
truths it expressed were universal in their range. 
They are the principles of the kingdom of God. 

We have observed that the significance of the bap- 
tism of Jesus at the hands of John was that it was 
Jesus* personal acceptance and endorsement of the 
message of John. That message was that title to 
membership in the kingdom of God is personal 
righteousness springing out of repentance. As we 
have seen, in studying the conversation with Nicode- 
mus and the woman of Samaria, Jesus did not stop 
with the message of John. He built on it a noble 
structure; but after all, the message of John was the 
foundation of all His conceptions, and it is through 
Jesus' adoption of this message that His own career 
is linked with the long line of Hebrew prophets from 
the days of Moses. The noblest utterances of the 
prophets, the message of the last and greatest of 
them, John the Baptist, and the teaching of Jesus 
find a point of unity in the truth that title to the 
kingdom of God depends on personal righteousness. 

Now " righteousness' ' is one of those vague terms 
to which different minds attach very different notions. 
It was, therefore, of the utmost importance that Jesus 
should clear this term of all false and superstitious 
and unworthy interpretations. That is just what the 
Sermon on the Mount does. It is an exposition of 
what Jesus means by "righteousness." 

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60 The Great Ministry 

The introduction to this exposition consists of the 
"Beatitudes" (Mt. 5:3-12), which are specific reaffir- 
mations of the principle that the title to the kingdom 
is personal righteousness. Those who are conscious 
of their need (the poor in spirit) ; those to whom their 
needs and the needs of others are a grief (the mourn- 
ers) ; those who in trouble maintain their equanimity 
(the meek) ; those who long for righteousness ; the 
merciful; the pure in heart; the peacemakers; the 
persecuted for righteousness' sake — these are the 
members of the kingdom; they have true blessedness; 
they find their needs met; they inherit the earth; 
they obtain mercy; they see God; they are called 
the sons of God; theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In 
this original and graphic way Jesus expounds and 
enforces the truth for which John the Baptist stood, 
that the title to the kingdom is personal righteousness. 
But how vital and searching and lovely the idea of 
righteousness is becoming under the touch of the 
mind of Jesus! 

But before Jesus proceeds to the main exposition 
His thought is arrested by a consideration that appeals 
to us at once. What a place this world would be if 
the people in it had the characteristics of which He 
has just been speaking! And then, with a magnifi- 
cent optimism, He looks at the men who are of this 
sort, and He says to them, "Ye are the salt of the 
earth, ... ye are the light of the world." 
That is your task, to save the world from putrefac- 
tion and darkness. And it is no hopeless enterprise. 
The unshaded light illuminates the whole room. 
Darkness has no chance before a ray of light. It is 
at once vanquished. How are the members of the 
kingdom to transform the earth? The answer of 
Jesus is quite simple, but perhaps it is more profound 
than sometimes we have imagined: "Let your light 
shine before men that they may see your beautiful 
deeds (literal translation), and glorify your Father 
which is in heaven." 



What is Righteousness 61 

Jesus has not come to anything like a full exposi- 
tion of His idea of righteousness, but even thus far 
He has said enough to suggest that His teaching is 
different from that of the law and the prophets. He 
meets that suggestion by a flat denial. He says, 
"I am not destroying, but I am fulfilling. The law 
and the prophets are of eternal significance and 
worth. They are not the product of human contri- 
vance or imagination ; they are the expression of the 
constitution of things. Heaven and earth may pass 
away as readily as the moral requirements. Great- 
ness in the kingdom of heaven will depend upon the 
fidelity with which one obeys the law of righteous- 
ness in conduct and word" (Mt. 5:17-19). 

The discourse now advances to the specific develop- 
ment of the great theme: What is righteousness? 
The rest of the fifth chapter of Matthew (vs. 21-48) 
is occupied with a series of contrasts between current 
Jewish conceptions and the teachings of Jesus. 
These contrasts touch murder, adultery, divorce, 
oaths, retaliation and resistance, and love of others. 
The significant feature of the teaching of Jesus as to 
these matters is its inwardness. With Him righteous- 
ness does not consist in outward conformity to certain 
rules or conventions; it consists in the rectitude of 
the thought and feeling that lie behind the outward 
act, out of which it springs. This not only applies 
a searching test to specific acts, but it enormously 
enlarges the range of acts which are to be judged. 
No schedule of deeds has a mesh fine enough to cap- 
ture all life. The teachings of Jesus, that the motive 
and impulse behind all acts measure them, brings 
the whole of life under the demand for righteousness. 

As Jesus proceeded His hearers must have felt, as 
we feel when we read His words thoughtfully, that 
He has made "righteousness" so difficult that it is 
well-nigh impossible. His idea of righteousness makes 
it nothing less than perfection, and that not the per- 



62 The Great Ministry 

fection of man, but the perfection of the heavenly 
Father (Mt. 5:48). 

We sometimes hear critics of historical Christianity 
say, "I stand on the Sermon on the Mount; if we 
follow out its teachings that is all we need; the Ser- 
mon on the Mount is good enough for me. " Yes, 
the Sermon on the Mount is not only good enough 
for us, but it is good enough for God. What man 
who ever lived will stand justified by its exacting 
requirements? And when men say, "That is all we 
need; that is religion enough for me," they are like 
a girl who sees the Koh-i-Noor at Windsor Castle 
and says, "That is all I need; that is good enough 
for me. " 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Motive of Righteousness. 

Mt. chs. 6, 7. 

The Sermon on the Mount is an ellipse. Its foci 
are the counsel of perfection (Mt. 5:48) and the 
Golden Rule (7:12), Both foci are determinative of 
the curve which bounds it. The problem, therefore, 
of analyzing it is not so simple as if it were a circle, 
described from one point. It has something of the 
complexity of actual life, which is never swayed by 
a single force. In a broad way, however, we may 
assert that the first part, which is chiefly devoted to 
the nature of righteousness, leads up to the command 
to be perfect like the heavenly Father; while the 
second part (chs. 6, 7), which is principally devoted 
to an exposition of the motive to righteousness, cul- 
minates in the precept to do to others as we would 
have them do to us. 

After Jesus has explained that the essence of 
righteousness is the filial relationship of man to God, 
He proceeds to show how this spiritual, vital fellow- 
ship, on the one hand, protects men from the evils 
that are inseparable from an external and formal 
righteousness; and, on the other hand, inspires those 
activities which bring life into conformity with the 
divine ideal. 

With peculiar insight Jesus discriminates the three 
outstanding perils of conventional righteousness. 
The first is putting the approbation of men in the 
place of the approval of God. Public opinion may 
be a great force for righteousness. Probably it 
influences most good men far more than they imagine. 
They want to set a good example, not to bring dis- 
credit upon their profession, or to be admired for 
their devotion. But the righteousness that has no 

63 



64 



The Great Ministry 



deeper root than these motives is a frail thing. It 
is only the soul that loves the praise of God more 
than the praise of men that has the reality of right- 
eousness. Jesus applied this principle to the three 
observances which His contemporaries regarded as 
the chief elements of religion — -to almsgiving (Mt. 
6:2-4), to prayer (vss. 5, 6), and to fasting (vss. 16-18). 
The dominating idea in each of these discussions is 
that the secret, inward, personal relationship of the 
soul of man to God is the only thing that gives sig- 
nificance to these acts. In other words, the worth of 
religious observances is not in their influence upon 
our fellows, but in their power to bring our own souls 
into fellowship with God. And when men do acts 
of piety for the sake of impressing their fellows, their 
religion becomes unreal and ostentatious. Men are 
won to God by the "beautiful deeds" of disciples 
(Mt. 5:16), not by witnessing their distinctively 
religious acts. 

Another peril of formal, rule-observing religion is 
its double-mindedness. When a man does not have 
the sense of vital, sympathetic relationship to God, 
and his religion is simply com- 
mandment-keeping, he will be 
thinking part of the time of him- 
self, and part of the time of God. 
His attitude will be: So much 
of time, strength, attention, treas- 
ure for myself, and so much for 
God. Laying up treasure upon 
earth will be supremely important, 
for who is to take care of him if 
he does not look out for himself? 
Inevitably such a man becomes 
selfish, double-minded, and har- 
tws is a beautiful red flower assed by anxieties. Over against 
IXra£M*~ this Picture, which is quite as 

ferredtobyChri8tinMt.6:28, tme tQ Hfe {n QUr QWn days ag 




The Motive of Righteousness 65 

it was to that of the first century in Judea, Jesus 
puts the disciple whose righteousness springs out of 
intimate personal fellowship with the heavenly 
Father. Such a disciple will be emancipated from 
the self-seeking, the cross-purposes and the solicitude 
to which the formalist is always subject (Mt. 6:25-34). 
A third evil of external religion is that it is unsym- 
pathetic and censorious. The mote in another's eye 
becomes a chief concern. No one is really competent 
to pass a judgment upon another's conduct. He does 
not have the data, and he lacks the proper temper. 
But this is the favorite business of the formalist. 
Like the Pharisee in the temple, he cannot keep it 
even out of his prayers (Lu. 18:9-14). Of course 
there are discriminations based on simple common 
sense. It is too often forgotten that the command 
not to give that which is holy to dogs, or to cast 
pearls before swine, which implies a palpable act of 
judgment, stands in immediate connection with the 
prohibition of judging. The dictates of spiritual 
religion do not violate common sense and the fitness 
of things. But over against the censorious hypocrite 
Jesus places the son and the father. In dealing with 
those w r ho are in spirit His sons, the heavenly Father 
first of all regards the fact of sonship, not the minutiae 
of desert (Mt. 7:7-12). In this great passage we have 
the germ of the transcendent Christian doctrine of 
grace. We should not forget that the Golden Rule 
immediately follows. The Golden Rule does not 
stand by itself. It is an inference, "All things, 
therefore," from the preceding exposition. This fact 
gives it a unique character. There are close parallels 
to the Golden Rule in Plato and in Confucius. Prof. 
Legge, the eminent professor of Chinese at Oxford, 
and a devout Christian, believes that we must con- 
cede that Confucius stated the Golden Rule affirma- 
tively, like Jesus, as well as negatively. But what 
neither Plato nor Confucius did, was to connect this 
rule for human conduct with the action of God, and 



66 The Great Ministry 

to enunciate the ultimate law of human life, that 
man should act in the little sphere of his experience 
according to the same principles, by the same methods, 
for the same end that God acts in the vast ranges of 
His being. It is interesting to observe that the 
counsel of perfection (Mt. 5:48), and the Golden 
Rule (7:12) rest upon identical grounds. 

But the question now arises: If filial relationship 
to God is the heart of righteousness, may not this 
very confidence in God rob men of the incentives to 
moral action? Jesus has already answered that 
question by pointing out that the Father's care leaves 
them free to devote their energies to the things most 
worth while — so that with a single mind they may 
seek first the kingdom of God (Mt. 6:33). The realm 
of duty, according to Jesus, is the realm of liberty; 
and in that realm man is free and responsible. Jesus 
applies this principle in three ways. He urges the 
necessity of vigorous action (Mt. 7:13; comp. Lu. 
13:24), of vigilant circumspection (Mt. 7:15-20), and 
of actual obedience (Mt. 7:21-27). No matter what 
we may say about the resources of the land, or the 
rewards of industry, food and raiment largely depend 
on forces beyond the control of man. Trust in God 
relieves us from over- anxiety about these things, but 
righteousness depends on our whole-hearted choices, 
upon our moral energy, upon actual obedience. On 
the one hand, trust in God for daily bread and all 
that it stands for emancipates the life of the spirit 
from the bondage of the material; on the other hand, 
trust in God, the sense of living fellowship with Him, 
is the mighty incentive for doing His will. He who 
said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures, 
be not therefore anxious, " also said, "Strive to enter 
in by the narrow door. " And He who made trust 
in God the burden of His great discourse closed it by 
exhorting men to obey God, for He knew that there 
cannot be obedience without trust, or trust without 
obedience. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The Evidences of the Messiah. 

Lu. 7:1-35. 

Immediately after Jesus had chosen the first four 
disciples He took them through Galilee on a short 
tour of preaching and healing. After His selection 
of the Twelve, and the course of instruction con- 
tained in the Sermon on the Mount, He accompanied 
them on a similar journey. The purpose of these 
tours was not only to proclaim the good tidings of 
the kingdom, but also to bring the disciples into 
actual contact with human life. The medical student 




Modern Nain. 

does not become a well equipped physician by read- 
ing books or by attending lectures; he must have 
the practice of clinics. Theological students need 
something more than courses in theology, exegetics 
and history ; they must bring the truth they win 
from these studies into actual relation with present 
problems. These journeys of Jesus with His disciples 
gave them clinical experience. 

Luke selects out of the many occurrences of this 
tour two events that are thoroughly typical — the 
healing of the centurion's servant (Lu. 7:2-10) and 

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68 The Great Ministry 

the raising from the dead of a widow's son (Lu. 7: 
11-17). The contrasts between these works of mercy 
impress every reader. The first was wrought upon 
one at a distance, the second upon one at hand; the 
first involves a supernatural knowledge as well as 
power; the second carries the demonstration of 
power to an extreme limit; the first was wrought in 
response to a faith that surpassed any that Jesus had 
found in Israel (Lu. 7:9); the second was not wrought 
in response to any faith at all, it sprang wholly out 
of the compassion of Jesus (Lu. 7:13). These con- 
trasts enable us to picture imaginatively the activities 
of Jesus. His helpfulness was as varied, and His 
resources as ample as these contrasts would suggest. 
Matthew leads us to suppose that the moral effect of 
the Sermon on the Mount was overwhelming (Mt. 
7:28, 29). The impression made upon the Twelve 
who witnessed this series of events, taken in connec- 
tion with the sermon, must have begotten in their 
hearts deep and strange convictions. 

We are now prepared to appreciate the episode 
which followed. At this juncture two disciples of 
John the Baptist arrived with the question of their 
master, "Art thou he that cometh, or look we for 
another ?" The Greek word translated " another' ' 
means another kind of person. The question of John 
involves doubt, not merely as to the Messiahship of 
Jesus, but as to the Messiahship of any one like Jesus. 
The skepticism of the Baptist is fundamental and 
radical. He doubts whether the Messiah is any such 
person as Jesus is showing Himself to be. His doubt 
extends to the whole program of Jesus — His principles 
and purposes and methods. Many expositors shrink 
from carrying out the evident implications of John's 
question. Some even go so far as to suggest that 
John sent his disciples to Jesus to confirm their faith, 
not to put his own doubt at rest. Such subterfuges 
will not do. The words should be taken at their 



The Evidences of the Messiah 69 

face value. John, in the dungeon of Machaerus, 
Where he had been imprisoned by Herod, and where 
he was awaiting death, reviewed his whole career. 
Was it possible that he had been deceived by that 
flash of insight which led him to declare that Jesus 
was the Lamb of God and the Son of God (Jo. 1:29, 
34) ? In view of the different program and temper 
of John from the course of Jesus, and especially in 
view of the apparent ruin of his own life-work, and 
the success of Jesus, the question, with all its skepti- 
cism, was thoroughly natural and human. It is 
wholesome for us to remember that unquestionably 
great men in the moral realm often walked in the 
darkness by dim and flickering lights. The touching 
thing about this incident is that John sent his friends 
to Jesus to ask of Him this searching, personal ques- 
tion. That betrays his fundamental confidence in 
Jesus. He believes that Jesus will tell him the truth. 
The relations between two friends, no matter how 
they may be strained by doubts and misunderstand- 
ings, are thoroughly sound and noble, when the one 
whose confidence is disturbed can yet go to the other, 
and say, I do not want to know what any third party 
says or thinks, I only want to know what you your- 
self say. That is precisely what John the Baptist 
did. And those who read this episode understand- 
ingly rise from it with a new appreciation of a great 
soul. 

The reply of our Lord to the Baptist's question 
brought close home to the representatives of John 
the evidence that was making such deep impression 
upon the minds of His own disciples (Lu. 7:21-23). 
Undoubtedly John would recognize this course of 
Jesus as corresponding with the Messianic ideal 
(Is. 61:1). It might be difficult for him to revise his 
own program (Mt. 3:10-12), but the beatitude with 
which Jesus closed His reply (Lu. 7:23) involves a 
delicate suggestion that John should view the work 



70 The Great Ministry 

of Jesus without prejudice, and conform his Messianic 
outlook to a truer perspective. 

The query arises, why did not Jesus, who had been 
moved by compassion to raise the widow's son from 
the dead, exercise His power in delivering His rela- 
tive and friend and forerunner? One answer, and 
probably the true one, is that John did not need 
compassion. The outward circumstances of John 
were about as depressing as they could be, but, no 
matter what the circumstances, a true, courageous 
man who is suffering for his loyalty to the truth, is 
not the one whom we should pity. Such a man takes 
the pity men give him, and hands it back, and will 
not have it. That is exactly what Jesus did a few 
months later (Lu. 23:28). There is a profound 
reason why the compassion of Jesus was not stirred 
for John the Baptist as it was for the widow of Nain. 

Would it have comforted John to know what Jesus 
thought of him (Lu. 7:24-29)? Perhaps so, but after 
all that great soul did not need it, and the martyr's 
crown is the brighter because he did not know it. 
But the disciples of Jesus needed it, and the world 
needed it. After the friends of the Baptist had 
departed, Jesus uttered the most appreciative eulo- 
gium upon the lonely prisoner of Machaerus that ever 
fell from His lips. Men and women to-day do not 
ahways know what Jesus Christ thinks of them. The 
events of life go hard with them. They experience 
poverty, sickness, bereavement, the blasting of 
cherished hopes. They are like the prisoner in 
Herod's castle, and no sympathetic word or help 
comes from the Christ in whom they have believed. 
One of the great rewards of the future for the loyal 
followers of Christ will be to know exactly what He 
thinks of them. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Three Attitudes of Men toward Jesus. 

Mk. 3:196-35; Lu. 7:36—8:3. 

During the second preaching tour of Jesus the atti- 
tude of His contemporaries toward Him began to 
take definite form. The aged Simeon had prophesied 
of Jesus in His childhood that He would be the touch- 
stone of human hearts (Lu. 2:35). Now that fore- 
cast began to be fulfilled. Men and women 
who came in contact with Jesus were rapid- 
ly led to take different positions toward 
Him. These positions were largely deter- 
mined by their characters, dispositions, and 
spiritual affinities. Because of this, the 
way Jesus affected them revealed — all un- 
consciously to themselves — "the thoughts 
of many hearts. " 

In the conduct of the sinful woman at 
Simon's feast (Lu. 7:37,38) we have a vivid 
illustration of the grateful, adoring love to 
Him which sprang up in a soul that had 
come to have faith in Him. It has been 
conjectured that this woman may have been 
a guest at Levi's farewell dinner (Lu. 5:29) terV * se - 
where she had seen and heard Jesus, and a wide tra- 
dition has identified her, though it may be unjustly, 
with Mary Magdalene. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 
etching, "Magdalene," has never been exhibited or 
reproduced, for reasons personal to the artist, which 
those who are familiar with Rossetti's home life will 
at once appreciate. One who saw this etching says 
that it represents the woman whom Luke describes 
in the street of a city, with a throng of merrymakers 
— she the fairest of them all. Her face has the 
beauty and the fascination of the loveliest of human 

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72 The Great Ministry 

countenances. But Rossetti has not pictured her in 
her thoughtless triumph. From an open window 
looking upon the street she has seen a face that makes 
her pause; the eyes of Jesus have met hers. She is 
ascending the few steps leading to the house of Simon 
the Pharisee. The laugh has died upon her lips; she 
is tearing the crown of flowers from her golden hair; 
she is flinging her ornaments into the street; she 
does not heed the youths who seek to restrain her; 
she turns away forever from her gay companions, 
who stand stricken with wonder. 

11 ' Oh, loose me! See'st thou not my Bridegroom's face 
That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss, 
My hair, my tears He craves to-day; — and oh! 
What words can tell what other day and place 
Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His? 
He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go! ' " 

— Rossetti. 

The look of Jesus has awakened within her soul 
some sense of the beauty of holiness, and of the possi- 
bility and wonder of redemption. Faith in Him has 
arisen in her heart, and in the light of that faith we 
can understand the beautiful story of her adoration 
of the Master in the Pharisee's house. 

Probably a larger number than we would at first 
suppose from a cursory reading of the gospel came to 
this attitude of faith in Jesus. The nobleman in 
Capernaum, who, with all his family, believed because 
of the son whom Jesus had healed, and the women 
who attended Jesus on this second tour (Lu. 8:2, 3) 
represented a somewhat numerous class. 

A second attitude toward Jesus is typified by 
Simon the Pharisee. His position is perfectly well 
defined. The opposition of the ecclesiastical party, 
to which Simon belonged, had become very intense, 
but Simon did not share this sentiment. On the con- 
trary, he was disposed to take a broad-minded, 



The Three Attitudes oj Men toward Jesus 73 

tolerant view of Jesus and of the whole situation. 
He would even go so far as to extend to Jesus the 
courtesy of an invitation to dinner, a proceeding 
that would give rise to much sharp criticism among 
his brother Pharisees. But Simon was careful not 
to go too far in these courtesies. He left undone a 
few of the delicate attentions which would show that 
he welcomed Jesus on the basis of hearty friendship 
and social equality. He did not provide the usual 
conveniences for washing the feet, and he offered no 
kiss of welcome. The conduct of Simon is not free 
from a tinge of patronage and social condescension. 
There were many things about Jesus that he liked, 
and he would wish to know Him better; but he could 
not go to the length of opening his heart and home 
to Him, and welcoming Him on the basis of sincere, 
unreserved, loyal friendship. The attitude of Simon 
was probably not the common one. He seems to 
have stood almost alone in it, but, throughout the 
Christian centuries, his attitude has been typical of 
the relation of multitudes to Jesus. Perhaps it is 
the prevalent attitude of the so-called "modern" 
mind. Jesus is not rejected; His claims are not dis- 
allowed. On the contrary, they are examined with 
an intelligent curiosity, and He is admitted to be a 
thoroughly estimable character, who merits considera- 
tion and hospitality. In short, the attitude of these 
persons toward Jesus is precisely that of Simon. 
They welcome Him to a certain extent; they do not 
oppose Him, but they adopt a course that is more 
offensive than opposition; they patronize Him. 

The scribes typify another attitude. Many senti- 
ments were mingled in their bitter hostility to Jesus. 
Undoubtedly they were moved to a small extent by 
devotion to the Mosaic law, which they believed that 
Jesus disparaged, but their view of the law was so 
hard, narrow and unspiritual that this motive is not 
entitled to much respect. What really influenced 



74 The Great Ministry 

them seems to have been a love of their position, with 
its emoluments, consideration and privilege. They 
embodied the worst vices of office-holders, whether 
ecclesiastical or civil. The besetting temptation of 
such men is to regard their positions as vastly more 
important than truth, justice, or the common welfare. 
The "scribes" were probably right in their forecast 
that if Jesus were permitted to continue His work 
their own privileges were doomed. Their attitude 
is thoroughly representative of the course of those in 
every age, who have opposed Jesus because they have 
been aware that His triumph was inimical to their 
selfish interests. Those interests may be their sen- 
sual desires, their unjust practices, or their dispro- 
portionate and unmerited privileges. 

The pursuance of evil desires is apt to reveal appal- 
ling abysses in human nature. The evil desire 
involves means for its accomplishment that hardly 
would have been dreamed of at first, but which the 
desire appropriates and approves. The unholy am- 
bition of Macbeth drags after it Duncan's murder. 
The self-interest of the scribes, untouched by any 
noble consideration, drags after it that astounding 
charge that Jesus was in league with Satan (Mk. 
3:22). 

As we look into this record of the attitude of men 
toward Jesus when He was on earth, we cannot fail 
to see in it permanent and eternal features. As with 
the point of a graver's burin we see delineated here 
the relationship of the men and women of to-day — our 
own relationship — to Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

An Exposition of the Kingdom. 

Mt. 13:1-53; Mk. 4:26-29. 

Immediately after the representatives of the 
ecclesiastical party at Jerusalem had charged Jesus 
with being in league with Satan He changed the 
method of His teaching. Heretofore He had spoken 
with a plainness and directness which made His 
meaning unmistakable. From this point He made 
a large use of parables, which, to a certain extent, 
veiled His teachings in the minds of those who lacked 
spiritual insight. Several considerations led Jesus 
to adopt this method. It lessened the irritation and 
consequent opposition which the previous method 
had aroused. The multitude understood what met 
the ear without apprehending all its implications and 
suggestions. They were prevented from fully under- 
standing that they might not misunderstand. Again, 
the very capacity to apprehend His teachings sifted 
His followers. Few better tests could have been 
applied to the future preachers of the truths of the 
kingdom than that of spiritual insight (Mk. 4:24). 
Furthermore, no more effective way could have been 
devised for lodging the truth permanently in the 
souls of men. A proposition, no matter how precisely 
worded, is soon forgotten. A story that embodies 
the truth lingers long in the memory and, if it has 
human interest, is associated in many ways with 
the experiences of life. Though the full import of 
such a story may not be at first apprehended, it is 
present in the memory to reveal its significance when 
reflection, the emergencies of life, or the growth of 
spiritual appreciation prepare the way (Mk.4:22). 

Matthew, with much skill, has grouped our Lord's 
parables of the kingdom into a progressive series, 

75 



76 



The Great Ministry 



which is characterized by a fine literary unity. The 
first parable, commonly called The Sower, portrays 
the origin of the kingdom in the word of God (Mk. 
4:14) and the way the fruitage of the word in human 
life is dependent upon the disposition and environ- 
ment of those to whom it 
comes (Mk. 4: 15-20). The 
interesting question at once 
arises whether or not the 
individual is wholly respon- 
sible for the conditions 
which determine the fate of 
''the word" in his own heart. 
The plain inference from 
the teaching of the parable 
is that while his responsi- 
bility is not complete, it is 
sufficient to make him, in 
a measure, accountable for 
the result. If Satan had 
had no previous welcome 
he could not take away 
"the word which had been 
sown"; if the cares of the world and the false at- 
tractions of riches had not beguiled the spirit, the 
word would not have been choked. This is in accord 
with a clear, but frequently disregarded teaching of 
Jesus, that a man's acceptance or rejection of Him 
is often determined by his previous attitude toward 
the dictates of righteousness (Jo. 3:20, 21; 16:9). 

But this kingdom, which springs out of the response 
of the individual soul to the word of God, exists in 
two spheres — in that of the soul of the individual, 
and in that of the organized life of the time. It 
exists in the heart of the disciple, and it exists in 
the world. The teaching of the parable of the tares 
in the field is twofold; that the kingdom as a world- 
fact is of a mixed nature — tares are mingled with 




From "Leeper photographs," copyright, 1902. 

Path through the Fields. 

Illustrating the wayside hearer. 



An Exposition of the Kingdom 77 

the wheat — and that violent methods of uprooting 
acknowledged evils may be hurtful to the good. The 
kingdom in the sphere of the individual life does not 
tolerate evil; the kingdom as a world-force exists in 
the midst of evil; it repudiates drastic methods of 
dealing with evil, and it waits for the final complete 
triumph of the good "until the harvest." 

If we add to the parables of the mustard seed (Mt. 
13:31,32) and of the leaven (Mt. 13:33) that of the 
growing seed (Mk. 4:26-29), w r e have Jesus' full 
thought as to the expansion of the kingdom. It goes 
back to the smallest beginnings; it progresses through 
its silently penetrating and transforming power, and 
it is marked by the irresistible energy of a vital pro- 
cess. 

The parables of the hid treasure and of the merchant 
seeking pearls illustrate the ways in w r hich men come 
into the kingdom. A man walking over a field, 
thinking of other things, happens upon a hidden 
treasure. The parable reminds us of the way the 
kingdom came to the woman of Samaria. She went 
out to draw water, and she found the "water of life. " 
On the other hand, we have the trader in jewels 
traveling here and there of set purpose seeking the 
choicest pearls. He reminds us of Nicodemus, who 
came deliberately to Jesus, honestly seeking spiritual 
life. The common point in the two parables is the 
way the man walking in the field and the merchant 
treated what they found. They had a sense of values. 
As we say in common speech, "they knew a good 
thing when they saw it." Their appreciation of 
their discoveries revolutionized their perspectives. 
The treasure and the pearl became of transcendent 
worth. Their possessions looked so mean and small 
that they at once sold them all, in order to acquire 
the thing of supreme value. The kingdom comes to 
men in different ways, but all those who enter it 
have this characteristic — they see its worth and sub- 
ordinate all other considerations to its demands. 



78 The Great Ministry 

In the last parable of the series (Mt. 13:47-50) 
Jesus reinforces His interpretation of a feature of 
the parable of the tares (Mt. 13:41,42). The mixed 
nature of the kingdom is not permanent. Human 
history and the evolution of the kingdom are moving 
toward the climax of separations. In both parables 
the significant phrase occurs, "So shall it be in the 
end of the world" (Mt. 13:40, 49). That is Jesus' 
forecast of His final triumph. He not only does not 
see evil victorious over good, He does not even see 
evil existing with good. What He sees is the over- 
whelming conquest of evil. 



CHAPTER XX. 



The Finger of God. 

Mt. 9:27-34; Mk. 4:35 — 5:43. 

After unfolding the truths of the kingdom of God 
to the multitudes in a series of parables, Jesus appears 
to have sought retirement by crossing the lake with 
His disciples from Capernaum to a point on the east 
shore. The tempest which arose while the little 
group was sailing across the Sea of Galilee (Mk. 4:35, 
36) gave the first occasion for the display of divine 
power (vss. 37-41). On the further side of the lake 



*-" *- ■ * tun * 




v _., From a photograph. 

Tiberias. v ^ 

A modern city on the Sea of Galilee. (View from the water.) 

He met the demoniac whom He healed (Mk. 5:8). 
The next day He cast a demon out of a dumb man 
(Mt. 9:32-34), at which the Pharisees again charged 
Him with being in league with Satan. On returning 
to Capernaum Jairus besought Him to heal his daugh- 
ter (Mk. 5:21-24). While our Lord was on the way 
to Jairus' house, a woman secretly touched the hem 
of His garment and was instantly healed of a long- 
standing, hopeless disease (Mk. 5:25-29). In the 
meantime word came from Jairus' house that his 
daughter had died, and hence it would be useless for 

79 



80 The Great Ministry 

Jesus to proceed. After encouraging the stricken 
father, Jesus went on to the house and restored the 
young girl to life (Mk. 5:35-43). Soon after He gave 
sight to two blind men (Mt. 9:27-31). 

A study of these six wonderful deeds of mercy 
naturally brings before us the whole subject of the 
miraculous element in the gospel story. Many at- 
tempts have been made, especially during the last 
half century, to dissect this element out of the New 
Testament records. Undoubtedly it can be done, 
but what is left is strangely disfigured. The story 
of the miracles runs through the texture, like silken 
threads woven into a cloth of wool. You can dis- 
tinguish the threads, bnt you cannot pull them out 
without ruining the fabric. 

Apart from the action of the free human personality, 
the Bible knows nothing of second causes. In the 
eyes of the Biblical writers the operations of nature 
are not the product of a machine, which God has 
constructed with more or less skill, and set going. 
The thought of the Bible is that God is present in all 
His works. The sun rises through His pow r er directly 
exerted; the rain falls; the seasons change. While 
transcendent over nature, God is immanent in nature, 
and He Himself is a free personality. The so-called 
"laws of nature" or "the order of nature" are simply 
the usual methods of His action. But He is no more 
controlled by a rule outside of Himself than a man 
is compelled to deal with his affairs by one method. 
Beyond a doubt, however, the divine activity is so 
uniform that it requires a peculiar quality and weight 
of evidence to lead us to believe in any variation what- 
ever from it. This clearly is the view of Jesus. In 
reply to the charge that He performed His wonderful 
works by being in league with Satan, He said, "If I 
by the finger of God cast out demons, then is the 
kingdom of God come upon you" (Lu. 11:20). His 
miracles, in other words, were the direct work of the 



The Finger of God 81 

hand of God. God is not in a distant heaven; He 
has not constructed a machine, as a man might con- 
struct a thirty-day clock and, having set it going, 
leave it to itself. Jesus says, God is here, and the 
miracle is the work of His hand. 

The later expositions of the theory of evolution, 
and the astonishing discoveries of physicists as to the 
constitution of matter are strikingly confirming the 
Biblical view of the relation of God to nature. As a 
very recent writer says, " Without the spiritual the 
physical universe has no ground of being, and nothing 
exists, not the least fraction of the material, still less 
anything of human affection, sympathy and personal 
life-force, apart from the Universal Life." 

It is necessary to remember that the value we 
attach to the evidence for events ''that cannot be 
accounted for by the laws of nature, but imply the 
operation of a causal energy superior to their action," 
will largely depend on the connection in which these 
events occur. It is incredible that God should vary 
from the usual method of His action for a trivial 
cause. The question is vastly important: Is the 
occasion worthy, or does this extraordinary event 
stand apart, isolated, without rational relation, a mere 
prodigy, a wonder in the air? The Lusitania does 
not stop when a little girl loses her doll over the rail ; 
but at the cry, "Man overboard," the bell rings, the 
mighty engines cease their throbbing beat, the 
giant shaft and the great propellers no longer revolve, 
and the majestic Cunarder comes to a full stop in her 
tremendous rush across the Atlantic. In considering 
the credibility of the miracles of our Lord, we must 
take into account His character and Person ; the vast 
Messianic prophecy and hope running through history 
like a line of light which He fulfils; the purpose of 
His mission to establish the kingdom of God in the 
earth by saving men from sin, and the mighty wit- 
ness of Christian experience to the eternal life which 



82 The Great Ministry 

He imparts to those in fellowship with Him. If 
Christ Himself is simply the product of "the order 
of nature," probably no evidence from documents 
or ancient history could lead us to accept the miracles 
attributed to Him. But if He is the supreme char- 
acter, and His Person is divine as well as human, if 
He is the Messiah whom the prophets discerned from 
afar, if He founded the actual kingdom of God in the 
earth, if through Him weak and sinful men are con- 
scious of sharing even here the eternal life, all doubts 
and difficulties are paled like the light of candles 
before the brightness and glory of the morning sun. 
The reason for the unusual working of the hand of 
God in human history is not slight and trivial but 
splendid and adequate. 

In His own day Jesus said, "If I by the finger of 
God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God 
come upon you. " The men who saw those mighty 
works had an immediate evidence which we "lack, 
but we see the kingdom of God as they did not and 
could not see it, and we can say with believing and 
adoring hearts, The kingdom of God has come through 
the hand of God, and the wonder and power of that 
coming make the mighty works of the Son of God, 
through whom it came, reasonable and probable. 



CHAPTER XXL 

The Conditions of Effective Christian Work. 

Mt. 9:35 — 11:1; Mk. 6:l-6a. 

Soon after the raising of J aims' daughter, Jesus ap- 
pears to have returned to Nazareth, accompanied by 
the Twelve. He found His townsmen still indisposed 
to accept Him. They did not, however, as during 
His former visit, attempt to treat Him with violence 
(Lu. 4:16-30). Jesus had become almost a national 
character, and doubtless many of the Nazarenes felt 
a good deal of satisfaction in the prominence of one 
who had been brought up in their village, which 
does not appear to have borne any too good a name 
(Jo. 1:46). The circumstance, however, that they 
could recall the humble surroundings of His early 
life begot in their minds a fatal prejudice against 
His claims. 

At this juncture Jesus adopted a comprehensive 
scheme for the evangelization of Galilee. The pur- 
pose of this plan was twofold — actually to evangelize 
the northern province, and to give His disciples 
needed practice In this kind of work. Heretofore 
our Lord usually accompanied His disciples on their 
preaching tours; or, to put it more accurately, they 
had gone with Him, and assisted Him. Now He 
does not go with them, but sends them forth by two 
and two. 

It may be alleged w r ith some show of reason that 
the instructions Jesus gave His disciples, just before 
they left for this evangelistic tour, were so related 
to the specific needs of Galilee at that time that they 
have little value for us. We live in a different world 
— a world of steam cars and telephones, of hotels 
and a commercialized social order — and these direc- 
tions about coats and shoes, about depending on 

S3 



84 The Great Ministry 

hospitality, and about the way to meet persecution 
are exceedingly remote from modern conditions. 
They contemplate a different world from that in 
which we live. Such statements are true, and it is 
only when we penetrate to the principle and spirit 
underlying these precepts that we gain from them 
any practical guidance in present-day conditions. 
The proper, indeed, the necessary, inquiry when we 
study this passage is, What principles did Jesus lay 
down as to effective evangelization? 

In the first place, it is clear that Jesus was provid- 
ing for the extension of His kingdom through the 
agency of well-trained men. Jesus did not by any 
means welcome to this public work every one whose 
heart responded to Him (Mk. 5:19). The Twelve 
had already enjoyed a superb initiation into the work 
of the Gospel ministry, and this preaching tour was 
to give them still larger discipline and experience. 
The first ministers of the Gospel were not only picked 
but trained men. The "call" was not enough, or 
rather the "call" was not simply a call to service, it 
was a call to acquire equipment in order that they 
might render service. The Christian church has not 
misapprehended the ideas of Jesus setting apart 
certain men for the work of the ministry, and in 
seeking to give them the best possible training for 
this service. The specific point at which some 
churches have misinterpreted Jesus has been in 
regarding these ministers as priests, mediating be- 
tween God and men by virtue of peculiar supernatural 
endowments, rather than as prophets, speaking the 
good tidings to men, which their hearers are to 
receive, and upon which they are to act. The ques- 
tion as to what sort of training those who are to 
enter the Christian ministry should receive is always 
open. It is receiving much attention to-day, and 
various proposals are urged for a revision of the work 
of our theological seminaries. This is right and wise. 



The Conditions of Effective Christ ion Work 85 

Such questions arc to be answered upon the broadest 
consideration as to the best way of meeting actual 
conditions. But the question as to the need of train- 
ing, the most adequate the wisdom of the time can 
afford, is not open — either in the New Testament or 
in the deliberations of our modern churches. 

Again, our Lord's instructions suggest the mani- 
fold ministry of the Gospel to the needs of men. The 
Twelve were not only to proclaim the message of 
Jesus but they were to do the works of Jesus (Mt. 
10:8). It has been impossible to seduce the Roman 
church into the practice of remanding ministry to 
the body to the care of the state. The hospital, the 
dispensary, the orphanage, the refuge, are under the 
care of the church, supported by the church, and one 
who receives these ministries cannot be unaware that 
it is the church which is extending this help. There 
is enormous power over men in this ministry. It 
makes the spiritual ministry more intelligible; it 
proceeds on the sound principle that a man is a 
unity and not a collection of unrelated compartments. 
Some of the most thoughtful leaders of our Protestant 
churches are now asking whether Protestantism, by 
consenting to the secularization of the very charities 
which Protestant Christians so largely support, is 
not failing to utilize a superb opportunity for extend- 
ing the kingdom of God. We are understanding the 
worth of medical missions in our foreign missionary 
work. Unless present indications are misleading, 
our American Protestant churches are coming to a 
new appreciation of the necessity of doing the works 
of Christ at home, and of doing these w r orks them- 
selves — not simply contributing the money which is 
administered without any odor of the love of God. 

Furthermore, our Lord's directions bring into a 
bright light the necessity of His own spirit in this 
vast enterprise of bringing the Gospel to men. He 
did not forget the dictates of courtesy, and He cau- 



86 The Great Ministry 

tions them about this (Mt. 10:12). He read character 
and discriminated between men on that basis. He 
urges them to do this (Mt. 10:11, 17). He showed 
directness and decision in dealing with specific cases 
(Lu. 9:57-62); the disciples are to manifest the same 
(Mt. 10:13-15). He was absolutely devoted to the 
will of His Father, and free from anxieties because 
He was in the Father's hand. That was the very 
spirit in which He counseled the Twelve to go forth 
(Mt. 10:19, 20, 28-33). It seems as if the simple 
statement, "It is enough for the disciple that he be 
as his teacher" (Mt. 10:25) crystallized the whole 
idea. The imperative condition of successful effort 
in the kingdom is that the disciple shall be as his 
Master. We shall find it very difficult to improve 
upon the ideas of Jesus as to the conditions of suc- 
cessful Christian work — adequate training for it; the 
proclamation of His message with the doing of His 
works; the possession of His spirit. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

A Great Temptation. 

Mk. 6:14-46; Jo. 6:1-15. 

Three events conspired to force upon Jesus a de- 
cision as to whether or not He would permit His 
countrymen to make Him their king. 

The first was the murder of John the Baptist by 
Herod. The circumstances of this foul deed are 
recounted with lifelike fidelity in the gospel of Mark 
(6:14-29). None of the Evangelists describes the 
effect of this atrocity upon the people as a whole, 




From "Leeper photographs," copyright, 1902. 

The Landing-place at Bethsaida Julias. 

Showing the entrance of the Jordan river into the Sea of Galilee. It was near here that the 
feeding of the five thousand took place. 

but it requires only a slight exercise of an historical 
imagination to reproduce the main features of the 
situation. Modern students of New Testament times 
are inclined to believe that the preaching of John the 
Baptist moved Palestine profoundly. John seems to 
have had an enormous following, and his message 
struck home to the hearts of his hearers. When, 
therefore, Herod Antipas — the tetrarch of Galilee 
and Perea, the official representative of the hated 
Roman power — apprehended John, and imprisoned 

87 



88 The Great Ministry 

him in the fortress of Machaerus, because the Baptist 
had ventured to apply some of the universally 
recognized principles of morality to his conduct; and 
when, in subservience to the wiles of two shameless 
women, Herod beheaded John, the popular indigna- 
tion against the tetrarch and the Roman power must 
have reached an intensity that made the public mind 
ready for a revolt. Many a revolution has advanced 
to success from a less substantial motive. 

In the second place, the results of the third preach- 
ing tour, which was in progress at the time John was 
beheaded, appear to have been entirely satisfactory. 
The disciples, going out by two and two, found a 
ready response to their message, and their works of 
healing reinforced the spiritual impression. The con- 
fidence that Jesus would show Himself to be the 
expected Messiah came to be very widely shared. We 
can at once appreciate how this strong public opin- 
ion was reinforced by the news of the tragedy of the 
Baptist's death. Calm students of politics, for there 
were such in Galilee and at Jerusalem, could see a 
situation forming in which Jesus, especially if He 
had the miraculous powers usually attributed to Him, 
could easily set up a power that might hold its own 
even against Rome. 

The third factor was the miracle of the feeding of 
the five thousand, which Jesus wrought at "the 
psychological moment," when public opinion was 
crystallizing in favor of making Him king. The 
supernatural resources displayed in this miracle, and 
the number of persons affected by it removed the 
last doubt as to the success of a revolution which 
Jesus should lead. Even Caesar's famous tenth 
legion would be helpless before a power that could 
feed a throng with a few loaves and small fishes. 
With such a power as this upon their side the Jews 
need take no account of the soldiers they could enlist, 
of the equipment they could furnish, of the treasure 



A Great Temptation 8 ( J 

they could provide. No matter what their resources, 
be they much or little, success was guaranteed from 
the start. 

An analysis, therefore, of the situation shows that 
the author of the fourth gospel was not indulging in 
a rhetorical flourish when he wrote, "Jesus therefore 
perceiving that they were about to come and take 
him by force, to make him king, withdrew again into 
the mountain himself alone" (Jo. 6:15). These 
words are an exact outline of the state of things at 
this juncture; and Jesus was compelled by events to 
make a decision that is comparable with His resist- 
ance of the temptations in the wilderness at the out- 
set of His ministry. 

Most expositors and authors of lives of Jesus pay 
far too little attention to this night upon the mountain. 
In a real sense Jesus had come to a parting of the 
Avays. We have seen that in meeting the temptations 
that came to Him immediately after His baptism 
Jesus decided that His powers must be devoted un- 
selfishly to the highest spiritual ends (Chapter V of 
this book). Now there was an opportunity to revise 
that decision. Indeed, the course of events, in a 
way, had compelled Him to consider whether or not 
He would yield to the pressure of public opinion. 
There was an easy way and a hard way before Him. 
The one path led to a splendid temporal sovereignty, 
not by any means divorced from spiritual influences; 
the other path led to rejection by His own people, 
and the horrors of the cross. We have not pene- 
trated to the inner life of Jesus until we come to a 
satisfactory answer to the question, Why did Jesus 
so absolutely reject every secular means for founding 
His kingdom? And the satisfactory answer, bring- 
ing with it great insights, comes when we realize the 
nature of Christ's kingdom, and its dependence upon 
spiritual agencies. Jesus might have done His 
nation and the world at large enormous good by yield- 



90 The Great Ministry 

ing to the pressure to accept an earthly kingship. 
But He would not have conferred upon the world the 
highest good, the good it most needs, if He had been 
diverted from His purpose of winning the spiritual 
allegiance of free personalities through the revelation 
of the character of God. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Parting of the Ways. 

Mt. 14:24-36; Mk. 6:47—7:23; Jo. 6:16-71. 

It became evident to Jesus that He could not per- 
mit the people to remain in doubt much longer as 
to the real character of His purposes. The miscon- 
ceptions they entertained about Him were natural, 
almost inevitable. All that the New Testament says, 
and the disclosures of long centuries of Christian 
history have not al- 
ways emancipated 
the minds of ear- 
nest-hearted follow- 
ers of Jesus from 
kindred misinter- 
pretations. It be- 
came imperative 
that Jesus should 
put a stop to the 
false impressions as 
to His mission 
which were giving 
rise to the demand 
that He should as- 
sert a temporal sov- 
ereignty. An opportunity presented itself the day 
after the five thousand were fed. During the night 
Jesus had appeared walking on the water to the relief 
of His distressed companions (Mt. 14:23-33). The 
miracle deeply confirmed the conviction of the disci- 
ples that Jesus was the Son of God (vs. 33). They 
needed the strong faith begotten by the experiences 
of the night for what awaited them. Immediately 
on reaching land in the early morning Jesus seems to 
have gone to Capernaum, and there many of those 

91 




From & stereograph, copyright by H. C. White Co. 

Ruins at Tell Hum. 

The probable site of Capernaum. 



92 The Great Ministry 

who had been fed by the miracle of the previous 
day, after a thorough search of the whole country- 
side, found Him in the synagogue. 

Jesus improved the occasion to make the most dis- 
tinct exposition, if we except the implications of the 
Sermon on the Mount, which may not have been 
widely known at this time, that He had yet given of 
His mission and of His relationship to men. In the 
fourth gospel we have an unusually full summary of 
what He said. It is commonly known as the dis- 
course on the Bread of Life. 

The imagery of the discourse grows directly out of 
the fact that the men before Him, within twenty-four 
hours, had been fed by a miracle. Their immediate 
hope was that another miracle of the same sort might 
be wrought. For a moment the vision of a kingdom, 
with Jesus at its head, in which they would be relieved 
of the necessity of work for daily bread swept before 
their mind. This was the audience to which Jesus 
spoke about the bread of life. 

The course of Jesus' thought closely resembles that 
in the conversation with the woman of Samaria. 
The purpose in both is the same; the figures are 
similar. She was thinking of water, and said, "Sir, 
give me this water, that I thirst not" (Jo. 4:15). 
They were thinking of bread, and said, "Lord, ever- 
more give us this bread" (Jo. 6:34). In both cases 
Jesus used the thing which satisfies a want of the 
body as a symbol of the satisfaction of the wants of 
the spirit that God had provided for men in Himself, 
and so He could say to the woman, "Whosoever 
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall 
never thirst" (Jo. 4:14), and to these representatives 
of the people at Capernaum, "I am the bread of life; 
he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that 
believeth on me shall never thirst" (Jo. 6:35). 

The woman of Samaria seems to have received a 
suggestion of the truth that the water springing up 



The Parting of the Ways 93 

in Jacob's well was a symbol of the eternal fountain; 
and at Capernaum Jesus made it so clear that there 
was no longer any room for misunderstanding that 
His aim was to meet those deeper wants of the human 
spirit, of which the hunger of the body is only a 
reflection in the realm of the sensuous. 

At Capernaum, however, He was more explicit 
than in Samaria as to the relationship of men to this 
provision of God for men. He explained that what 
is to satisfy human need is not something that He 
bestows apart from Himself. It is not a cup of water 
or a loaf of bread thought of as something external 
to Himself and to them, but the water and the bread 
are Himself. He Himself is the gift of God. 

Some of the current representations of the way of 
salvation do not rise to the height of this great argu- 
ment. The gift of God in Christ is not like a ticket, 
or a coin, or a cup of water, or a loaf of bread, that 
one can take from the hand of another and remain the 
same man afterwards as before. The gift of God is a 
fellowship, and no one can enter into a personal 
fellowship with another and remain the same man. 
His response to the fellowship opens his inner life 
to the personality that he welcomes. Nothing does 
more to determine character than our fellowships. 
The forces of heredity and environment are almost 
weak in comparison with the tremendous reactions 
of personalities upon each other. One can be un- 
affected in his deeper life by external gifts, no matter 
how glad he may be to have them, but one cannot 
be unaffected even to the very springs of his being 
by the fellowships he entertains. That is why the 
response of the soul to the fellowship of Jesus Christ 
is the transforming power over character, and to 
know Him is eternal life (Jo. 6:54; 17:3). 

This is the thought of Jesus in the figure of eating 
His flesh and drinking His blood. We degrade the 
whole conception when we forget His own caution in 



94 The Great Ministry 

this very passage that "it is the spirit that giveth 
life; the flesh profiteth nothing" (Jo. 6:63). Jesus 
said that He Himself was "the bread of life, " and 
that, just as to appropriate bread one must eat it 
and be nourished by it, so to appropriate the bread 
of life one must come into the most intimate relations 
with Him that the constitution of personalities 
permits. 

It is not in the least surprising that the proclama- 
tion of these spiritual truths alienated and angered 
those who heard Jesus in Capernaum. They saw at 
once that it was no longer possible to believe that He 
could be used to bring about independence of Rome, 
or even to give them bread by miracles. "Upon this 
many of his disciples went back, and walked no more 
with him" (Jo. 6:66). 

We cannot miss the pathos of the question that at 
this juncture our Lord addressed to the Twelve, 
"Would ye also go away?" But the instructions of 
the past had not been wholly in vain. These men 
had begun to discern through the lens of the material 
fact the spiritual reality, and Simon Peter answered, 
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words 
of eternal life. And we have believed and known 
that thou art the Holy One of God" (Jo. 6:68, 69). 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Unity of the Character of Jesus, 

Mk. 7:24— 8:22a. 

Most human personalities disclose a lack of inner 
coherence, harmony and unity. They have unrelated 
and uncoordinated faculties, impulses and tendencies. 
In Kipling's story of The Ship that Found Herself, 
most men can read a searching parable of their own 
inner lives. The several parts of their natures do 
not work smoothly together and contribute their 
proper service toward the common purpose. Hence 
we find ourselves and others full of surprises, incon- 
sistencies and contradictions. In one mood or in 




Ruins at Tyre. 

one set of circumstances men hardly appear to be 
the same persons that they show themselves to be 
in other frames of mind and in other surroundings. 

Strictly speaking there are no surprises in the life 
of Jesus. We may wonder at the plane upon which 
He Jived, it is so above that of men; we may be 
amazed at the spirituality of His purpose; we may 
be astounded at the way He subordinated matchless 
resources to moral influences and agencies, but, after 
all, when we have grasped the principles that con- 
trolled Him, and the end He had in view, His career 

95 



96 The Great Ministry 

is coherent and orderly. The element of surprise is 
confined to the personality of Jesus itself, not to its 
manifestations, which all spring from and illustrate 
a spirit at peace with itself. 

The incidents recorded of our Lord's journeys into 
the borders of the heathen world after the great defec- 
tion at Capernaum illustrate this feature of His 
character. In these incidents the surroundings are 
different from those which occur elsewhere in the 
gospels. He is no longer on Jewish soil where the 
predominant features of architecture, language or 
customs reflect the life of the Old Testament. In the 
province of Syrophoenicia He came in contact with 
the old Canaanitish civilization that had done so 
much to expand the ideas of Israel and to corrupt 
its morals. In the Greek cities to the west of the 
Jordan and in Decapolis He was in the atmosphere 
of the Greek life that already manifested tokens of 
decadence. In former days He had been followed 
by grateful, applauding multitudes. Now the number 
of His companions had shrunken to the Twelve, with 
possibly a few other friends. Hitherto He had been 
engaged in an aggressive propaganda among the 
people at large. The masses of the people had failed 
Him as absolutely as the upper classes. Jesus was 
not misled by the modern fallacy that the so-called 
"common people" are morally more open-minded 
and responsive to spiritual appeals than the privileged 
classes. Probably He did not make any distinction 
between ranks. All were men, and He knew what 
was within man. Now that the masses and the classes 
both repudiated Him, He abandoned evangelistic 
work, and in the semi-seclusion of these journeys into 
foreign territory devoted Himself to the instruction 
of the Twelve. So far from proclaiming the kingdom 
He sought obscurity, and especially warned those 
whom He healed at this period not to report it (Mk. 
8:22-30). 



The Unity of the Character of Jesus 97 

And yet we feel that He is the same person. We 
should know Him anywhere. The changes of the 
outward have not affected the inward, which can be 
true to itself and manifest itself as a unity in any 
time or place. 

Three prominent events of this period strikingly 
illustrate this characteristic. Jesus is the same sym- 
pathetic minister to human suffering in Phoenicia as 
in Galilee. The correctness of this statement has 
sometimes been challenged. It has been said that 
His treatment of the Canaanitish woman was brusque 
to the point of harshness. The narrative, perhaps, 
may be read in that way, but such an interpretation 
misses the nuances that taught the disciples an impor- 
tant lesson. Probably their attitude toward the 
Canaanitish people, the hereditary enemies and the 
corrupters of Israel, was that of poorly concealed 
patronage, if not contempt. In the eyes of Peter 
and the rest these people were "dogs. " When Jesus 
said, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and 
cast it to the dogs" (Mk. 7:27), He was using the 
language of the disciples, and there was something 
in tone or eye which led the woman to see that. A 
slight inflection or a glance would be sufficient. The 
woman's answer was thoroughly sympathetic with 
His point of view. She might be a "dog" in the 
eyes of Peter and the rest, but she knew that she was 
not so in His eyes. It was not simply her persistence 
under rebuke, but the keen insight and confidence of 
her faith in Jesus, shown in her apt and humble 
answ r er, that at once placed her in the same rank 
with the Roman centurion (Mt. 8:10), also a foreigner 
to Israel. 

The second incident was the feeding of the four 
thousand. The miracle so resembles the feeding of 
the five thousand just before His last visit to Caper- 
naum, that some authorities identify the two, but 
the language in Mk. 8:19, 20 is decisive against that 



98 The Great Ministry 

interpretation. The occasions were very different. 
The four thousand must have been largely Gentile. 
He showed that after His rejection by His own 
people His attitude toward men was unchanged. 

The rebuke of the disciples also manifested the 
same devotion to spiritual ends which marked the 
program adopted at the temptation. The demand 
for a sign in the sky (Mk. 8:11-13) has a close resem- 
blance to the second temptation (Mt. 4:5,6). Evi- 
dently the disciples were disappointed that He had 
not acceded to this demand. His caution, "Take 
heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees [reliance 
on externals] and the leaven of Herod [political ambi- 
tion]," met this precise mood. They thought that 
their failure to take a supply of bread was the point 
of the admonition, but He reminded them at once 
that He had abundantly shown by two miracles that 
He could supply the lack of bread (Mk. 8:18-21). 
What He could not do was to eradicate from their 
souls the confidence in externalities and the worldli- 
ness that were all about them, unless their eyes and 
ears were open to His spiritual message. 

These weeks, possibly months, after the rejection 
at Capernaum were full of elements of discourage- 
ment. In such periods brave men find their visions 
dissolving, and they ask, "What is the use?" Such 
experiences transform character, and make men hard 
and cynical and bitter. But the glimpses we have 
of our Lord during this trying time disclose the same 
calmness and sympathy and insight that marked the 
days of growing favor. 



CHAPTER XXV. 
The Great Confession. 

Mt. 16:13-28; Mk. 8:22-26. 

Matthew records that not only the Pharisees but the 
Sadducees asked of Jesus a sign in the sky. The 
phrase "and Sadducees" (Mt. 16:1) signifies that the 
two hostile parties among the Jews recognized a 
common danger in the spread of the influence of Jesus, 
and forgetting their differences, made common cause 
against Him. Jesus saw the inevitable end of this 




View in the Lebanon Mountains. 



From a photograph. 



combination. The two parties could array all Juda- 
ism against Him and in all likelihood compass His 
death. 

The gospel narrative presents some striking re- 
semblances to the masterpieces of Greek tragedy. At 
first the situation appears to involve countless pos- 
sibilities as to the final issue ; but, as we follow the un- 
folding of characters and events, and their reactions, 
we become aware that the process is moving toward an 

99 



100 The Great Ministry 

inevitable end. That is the way we come to feel as we 
ponder the gospel story. In view of the personality 
of Jesus, and the characters, ambitions, and preju- 
dices of the men of His time, who had the places of 
power, there was no other possible issue than the death 
of Jesus. Our Lord Himself saw this clearly, and 
accepted it. 

The purpose of the journey from the shores of the 
Sea of Galilee to the foot-hills of Hermon was that 
Jesus and the Twelve might have a few weeks of un- 
molested association in a region that was so largely 
Gentile that the fierce Jewish rancor could not be 
easily kindled. It was on this journey that Jesus ven- 
tured to put to the test His disciples' recognition of 
His nature. First He asked them who men said He 
was. Having received their answer He passed to the 
close and momentous question: ''But who say ye that 
I am" (Mt. 16:15) ? Peter, at once, responded for the 
rest in the great confession, "Thou art the Christ [the 
Messiah], the Son of the living God" (Mt. 16:16). 

The significance of this answer of Peter as dis- 
tinguished from previous confessions of our Lord's 
Messiahship, such as that of Andrew to Simon, and 
of Philip to Nathanael (Jo. 1:41,45), or that of 
Nathanael himself (Jo. 1:49), or that of the disciples 
after they had been rescued in the storm (Mt. 14: 
33), or that of Peter after the crisis at Capernaum 
(Jo. 6:68, 69), was that these confessions, except that 
of Peter at Capernaum, were made with a certain 
idea of the Messiahship in the speaker's mind. Even 
the confession at Capernaum was uttered immediately 
after a stupendous miracle, and before there was an op- 
portunity of realizing the full extent of the defection 
that followed the discourse on the Bread of Life, or 
the full import of that teaching. But now several 
weeks had passed. There had been ample opportu- 
nity for meditation upon what had happened, and upon 
what Jesus had said. The union of those hereditary 



The Great Confession 101 

enemies, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, against 
Jesus had been demonstrated, and the dullest minds 
had begun to see what that involved. The old mate- 
rial, political conception of the Messiah had been shat- 
tered, if not destroyed. In view of these circum- 
stances we see at once how much it meant that Peter 
answered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God." The previous confessions had assumed that 
Jesus conformed, or would conform, to the speaker's 
idea of the Messiah. But now those popular notions 
of the Messiahship had been largely dispelled in the 
mind of Peter. His confession therefore meant, not 
that Jesus satisfied his idea of the Messiah, but that he 
left his conception of the Messiah to be filled out and 
interpreted by the personality and work of Jesus. It 
meant that Jesus was so manifestly the Christ, that he 
subordinated his judgment of what the Christ should 
be to the disclosures that Jesus should make of Him- 
self. It is related of several famous generals — of 
Napoleon, of Grant, and of Lee — that, in disguise, 
without any indication of their rank, they would at 
night, when recognition was difficult, engage in con- 
versation with one or two privates; but frequently 
there was something in their tone or carriage or men- 
tal outlook which caused the private to feel that he 
was not talking with a comrade, and often the dis- 
guise was penetrated. The intuition of Peter was 
like that. He had stopped asking whether or not 
Jesus had this or that mark of being the Messiah; in 
a swift, divine insight he saw that He was the Christ. 
Our Lord's recognition of Peter's confession (Mt. 
16:17-20) has been variously interpreted. But the 
obvious meaning is doubtless the true one. The "rock" 
was Peter, but Peter responsive to the spirit of God, 
and capable of this superb insight. A peculiar pri- 
macy in the church belongs to Peter, as being the first 
to make this confession, but it is not an official pri- 
macy, as the Roman church teaches. It gave him, as 



102 The Great Ministry 

we see in the history of the Apostolic church, no lord- 
ship over his brethren, and there is not a hint that he 
had the slightest power of transmitting whatever 
shadowy primacy he may have had to a successor. 
Peter himself throws light upon the meaning of Jesus 
when he speaks of believers in Jesus as " living stones, 
. . . built up [into] a spiritual house" (1 Pet. 2:5). 
The award of Jesus to Peter is typical of a universal 
Christian experience. Every man who by the spirit 
of God comes to a like recognition of Jesus is also a 
rock to whom the Lord's great promise in a great 
measure applies. 

But Peter's true and deep insight had not yet satu- 
rated his entire nature and assimilated it to itself. 
When Jesus spoke plainly of the issue to which events 
were tending — His own death at Jerusalem — Peter 
could not conceive how this could be the fortune of 
the Messiah. His conceptions of the Messiahship 
were not yet so fully subordinated to the revelation 
of Jesus that he could tolerate such a thought. The 
swift, sharp rebuke of Jesus (Mt. 16:23) indicates that 
the very recoil of Peter's mind from the suggestion 
was associated in the thought of Jesus with His own 
temptation in the wilderness. He can see a Satanic 
face behind the natural reluctance of Peter to -con- 
template such an end for his Lord. Was not this 
the very temptation which He had overcome during 
the night on the mountain after the people would 
have made Him king? 

But instantly the thought of Jesus came back to 
rest upon the underlying principles of His whole 
ministry. Spiritual values are supreme, and these 
can only be attained, for oneself or for others, by 
the experience for which the cross stands. But the 
issue of the cross is not doubtful. In that dark hour 
our Lord had a vision of the final outcome, "For the 
Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father 
with his angels" (Mt. 16:27). 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

Forces that Advance and Resist the Kingdom. 

Review of Chapters XIV-XXV. 

The study in chronological order of the events de- 
scribed in the four gospels makes the successive steps 
in the career of Jesus entirely reasonable and intel- 
ligible. We see that He worked in no haphazard 
fashion, but according to a program that had been 
thoroughly considered. The success of His plan was 
thwarted by conditions that are inherent in human 
nature. These con- 
ditions , therefore , 
have a permanent 
significance for the 
student of the 
progress of the re- 
ligion of Jesus in 
the world. In re- 
viewing the gospel 
history of Christ 
up to the time of 
Peter's confession 
at Caesarea Philip- 
pi (Mt. 16:16), per- 
haps we cannot do 
better than to set sharply before our minds the pro- 
gram of Jesus, and the conditions which thwarted 
its development. 

Professor J. R. Seeley of Cambridge, England, in 
that remarkable book, Ecce Homo, does not make a 
mistake when he says that the plan of Jesus was to 
arouse in the hearts of men an intense personal devo- 
tion to Himself, which, through the enthusiasm for 
humanity which He inspired, would make His fol- 
lowers the agents for enlarging that brotherhood of 

103 




From & photograph. 

The Gate to Caesarea Philippi. 



104 The Great Ministry 

souls moved by common attachment to Himself that 
He called "the kingdom of God." The means by 
which this program was to be realized appeared to be 
ample. First, and greatest of all, there was the 
unparalleled personality of Jesus Himself which made 
a profound impression upon such different persons 
as Nicodemus and the woman of Samaria; upon a 
Roman centurion and a Canaanite mother; upon 
Matthew and Simon Zelotes; upon John and Thomas. 
This impression was deepened and widened by His 
teachings, which were marked by a penetrating 
insight into the human soul, and a positive and self- 
evidencing disclosure of the relation of God to men. 
And these teachings were accompanied by the miracles 
of helpfulness, which, on the one hand, relieved the 
sick and the bereaved, and, on the other hand, 
revealed in His personality a sympathy with human 
distresses that elicited personal affection. For a 
time it looked as if these forces were to be triumphant, 
and, from a human point of view, we may say that 
the successive preaching tours were organized and 
carried out with that expectation. 

What then were the forces which wrecked this 
plan? First of all there was the hostility of the 
Pharisaic part}^ in Jerusalem to the young Teacher. 
Evil men in great places become singularly acute as 
to forces and tendencies that threaten their positions. 
The Pharisees knew, from the day when Jesus over- 
threw the tables of the money changers in the temple, 
that they had to reckon with a hostile force. Up to 
the time we are considering, Jesus had not specifically 
attacked the Pharisees, but they had a premonition 
of what was coming; and they determined to array 
all the forces of Judaism and of the Roman power, 
so far as they could influence it, for His overthrow 
and destruction. The rising fame of Jesus soon 
became such a menace to Jewish officialdom that the 
Sadducees, influenced by a common peril, made a 



Forces that Advance and Resist the Kingdom 105 

common cause with the Pharisees against Jesus. It 
was like the Republican and Democratic parties in 
our own country forgetting their hereditary rivalries 
and antagonisms, and making common cause against 
a leader of anarchism. The official view, the view 
which one must profess in order to be in good stand- 
ing among the Pharisees or the Sadducees, was that 
the prophet of Nazareth was a pestiferous fellow who 
must be gotten rid of. 

Another force that resisted the program of Jesus 
was the devotion of the multitude to material ends. 
For a time Jesus w r as exceedingly popular. Many 
in the crowds that followed Him began to see how 
such influence and miraculous power could be uti- 
lized to secure independence of Rome, while others, 
after the feeding of the five thousand, evidently be- 
lieved that in following and applauding Jesus they 
were embracing an excellent opportunity to get bread 
without working for it. The discourse of Jesus at 
Capernaum disabused the minds of both the political 
and the bread followers; and He was left alone with 
a handful of attached friends. 

There is a resemblance between the antagonism of 
the Pharisees and that of the multitude which should 
not pass unnoticed. Both classes opposed Jesus 
because they could not use Him. Any type of 
religion can escape the perils that beset the program 
of Jesus by submitting to be used for the selfish pur- 
poses of men. 

But behind both of these antagonisms to Jesus was 
that evil in the human heart which blinds it to the 
appreciation of spiritual values. In this the officials 
of Jerusalem and the multitudes in Galilee are abso- 
lutely at one. Neither can see, nor make a whole- 
hearted response to a disclosure of spiritual nobility 
and worth. No type of spiritual religion can make 
its way among men who lack appreciation of the 
morally heroic, and of great spiritual ideals. It is 



106 The Great Ministry 

for this reason that our public schools, our Sunday 
schools and every institution for public enlightenment 
and elevation should constantly uphold the noblest 
examples of moral heroism and of self-sacrificing devo- 
tion to the things of the spirit. The point of Ste- 
phen's sermon (Acts 7:1-53) is that Judaism had lost 
the power of appreciating moral values. A people 
that for centuries could not recognize its own best 
men, but killed its prophets, of course would put 
Jesus Christ to death on the cross (Acts 7:52, 53). 

We may say, reverently, that our Lord felt pro- 
foundly the impotence of the great forces in His 
hand to win men to Himself, and set up the kingdom 
of God in the earth. His language to Simon Peter, 
after the great confession, shows that, speaking after 
the manner of men, He recognized that He must add 
to the resources of the kingdom another power. 
"From that time began Jesus to show unto his dis- 
ciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer 
many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, 
and be killed, and the third day be raised up" (Mt. 
16:21). 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

The Divine Assurance. 

Mk. 9:2-32. 

Most of the miracles recorded in the New Testa- 
ment were wrought by our Lord or by His disciples. 
A few, like the witness at the baptism of Jesus and 
the transfiguration, to all appearance, were wrought 
independently of the agency of any one upon the 
earth, and Jesus accepted them as evidences that He 
was walking in the way the Father had appointed, 
fulfilling the divine plan. 

As we have seen repeatedly in the course of these 




From a photograph. 



Mount Hermon. 



studies, Jesus always refused to work a miracle for 
His own personal advantage. He fixed that prin- 
ciple in His attitude toward the first temptation. 
He would not turn the stones into bread to save 
Himself from starving, but, a few days later, He 
turned the water into wine to save His host from a 
social embarrassment. Still, though He would not 
use His divine power for His own comfort, He was 
thoroughly responsive to a miraculous assurance 
received from the Father. 

107 



108 The Great Ministry 

If this fact seems to make it more difficult to con- 
struct a theory of the Person of Christ, we must not 
suffer the circumstance that we are puzzled to set 
forth a complete philosophy of the divine life under 
human conditions to obscure our perception of the 
truth that the life of Jesus was lived throughout 
under conditions that are absolutely common to 
humanity. He did not use His divine power to 
meet the exigencies or to deliver Himself from the 
distresses of human experience. 

When the sons of millionaires boast, as some of 
them have done, that they have known what it is 
to work for a dollar or a dollar and a half a day, and 
then assume that they understand the lot of wage- 
earners, sensible persons simply smile, and ask 
whether or not these young men have ever known 
what it is to be wholly dependent on their own exer- 
tions, without any prospect of aid, in sickness and 
trouble, from their rich fathers. To have done so 
would be the only thing that would give the slightest 
force to their vaunting. Jesus did not live the life 
of the Son of God in the world with any reliance 
upon aid that did not come to Him as a man work- 
ing under human conditions. Assurances and com- 
fort from God may be expected by us all. 

From this point of view we can appreciate the 
significance of the transfiguration. It was not an 
experience wholly for the sake of the disciples, al- 
though that element was in it. It was primarily 
God's assurance and comfort for His Son. The 
main events which preceded it make this very clear. 
After the confession at Csesarea Philippi, and our 
Lord's rebuke of Peter, the relation of Jesus to the 
Twelve must have been tremulous with difficulty. 
Peter's superb insight, after all, had only been partial. 
He had not yet been emancipated from the tendency 
to think of the Messiah in the terms of his own pre- 
conceptions. It had been incredible to him that the 



The Divine Assurance 109 

Messiah should be put to death. For six days the 
relationship of Jesus and the Twelve must have been 
exceedingly delicate on both sides. They believed 
in Him, and yet — there was always a recurrence in 
their minds of those ominous words "and yet. " The 
unequivocal declaration of the Master as to His death 
was too preposterous, too horrible, to find ready 
admittance to their souls. They simply could not 
harmonize it with their other ideas. If they believed 
it, they believed it as men believe a truth to which 
their minds are compelled by some external evidence, 
but which is not assimilated by the life, because the 
spirit makes no vital, fructifying response to it. The 
first effect of the disclosure at Caesarea Philippi must 
have been simply stunning and bewildering. As we 
say in familiar speech, they "could not bring their 
minds to it. " 

This was the situation when Jesus took Peter and 
James and John on a mountain walk. It was a 
heavy-hearted group. As they paused for prayer, 
suddenly the form of Jesus was transformed; His 
very garments became radiant. The disciples saw 
that two, whom they recognized as Moses and Elijah, 
talked with the Master; they even caught the drift 
of the conversation, and, more than all, they heard 
the voice from heaven. Had the soul of Jesus been 
troubled at the episode of six days before? Had He 
been tempted to re-read the divine plan to discern 
another interpretation? Had He been cast down in 
heart at the repugnance of the disciples, when they 
knew the whole truth about His earthly career? We 
do not know. Still, such suggestions may give us a 
true hint as to His mood. And now there came, in a 
moment, this revelation from the Father. We can 
imagine something of what this experience meant to 
our Lord, and to His disciples who shared it. It was 
the overwhelming witness and confirmation of Jesus 
as the suffering Messiah. Moses and Elijah, in the 



110 The Great Ministry 

invisible world, had seen the astounding fact. God 
Himself bore witness to it. 

From the time of this experience the attitude of 
Jesus toward His work, and the attitude of the dis- 
ciples toward Him, changed. He no longer courted 
solitude and secrecy. He began to bear His witness 
openly, and in the chief centers of the national life, 
as at the beginning of His ministry. He moved for- 
ward with the poise and sureness that mark one who 
sees his path with entire clarity. Henceforth there 
are no more misunderstandings in the minds of the 
disciples as to the issue of their Master's earthly life. 
It would be far too much to say that they are recon- 
ciled to it, but they do not cast the thought out of 
their minds. It begins to form some affinities with 
the deeper currents of their lives. 

The experience of the transfiguration opens some 
difficult and delicate questions as to the possible rela- 
tions of departed spirits to the activities of the earth. 
But the fact should not be overlooked that this open- 
ing of the invisible was in connection with the tran- 
scendent fact of human history — the cross of Christ 
— and even then, the communication was transient. 
The disciples were not encouraged, or even permitted, 
to remain in this atmosphere. The disclosure was 
not for curiosity or for enjoyment but for assurance. 
It had done its work when it had imparted the mood 
of comfort and conviction, and this mood was for 
service. The vast suffering world of mankind is 
typified in the demoniac child at the foot of the 
mountain. The world-famous picture of "The Trans- 
figuration" is not only great as a work of art, it is 
great in its insight that over against the vision of the 
invisible, with its knowledge and peace and sympathy, 
is the suffering world, and that the purpose of the 
experiences of mounts of transfiguration is equipment 
for the service of men to whom no such moments 
have come. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

The Motives to Forgiveness. 
Mt. 17:24—18:35. 

It is singular how profoundly men may be moved 
by spiritual truths, and yet large sections of their 
natures remain uninfluenced. Doubtless the disciples 
had sympathized with the confession of Peter at 
Caesarea Philippi. They had begun to apprehend 
more truly than ever before the nature and mission of 
their Master. As a body — for the case of Judas 
should not divert our attention too much — they 
meant to be loyal to Him, to live the kind of life and 
to do the work to which He called them. But how 
little as yet they knew what that life and that service 
were! How far as yet they were from appreciating 
that radical transformation of the soul which Jesus 
demanded ! 

The revelation of the range of the Christian life 
came about in a natural way. After the experience 
of the transfiguration Jesus no longer shunned publi- 
city. Almost immedi- 
ately He seems to 
have returned to Ca- 
pernaum — the scene 
of His early ministry, 
where He was exceed- 
ingly well known. 
The question that 
some official put to 
Peter as to the acknowledgment on the part of Jesus 
of the obligation to pay the annual temple tax — a 
query that, in all likelihood, was raised to involve 
Jesus in some controversy with the ecclesiastics — 
had a curious result. The circumstance that Peter 
was the one to be approached indicated to the rest 

ill 




A Jewish Shekel. 



112 The Great Ministry 

of the group that, in public opinion, he had come to 
be looked upon as, next to jesus, the leader of the 
company. An allusion in Mark's gospel shows that 
the question of precedence and leadership had al- 
ready disturbed them not a little. When, therefore, 
this question of the officer emphasized the prominence 
of Peter, it became the occasion of some heart-burn- 
ing. They showed it by asking Jesus as to who was 
greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Some of them, 
perhaps, hoped for an answer that would put Peter 
down. Jesus embraced the opportunity to inculcate 
some of His distinct ideas of the true relations of men 
to each other. 

It is interesting to notice how this instruction which 
so emphasizes the worth of modest, unselfish human 
service insensibly passes into a discussion as to the 
necessity of cultivating the spirit of forgiveness. The 
reason is that the unforgiving temper is so closely 
associated w r ith the hardness and self-concern and 
want of sympathy that lead men to push their ambi- 
tions without regard for others. The man who for- 
gives others, in the deep sense of Jesus, is one who 
by necessity is free from exaggeration of his own 
importance. He sees things in another perspective. 
One must be humble before he can forgive. To a 
proud, self-conscious man real forgiveness is almost 
impossible. 

Looking at this teaching of Jesus in a broad way 
we may say that He affirms that there are three mo- 
tives, considerations or qualities of spirit which result 
in the forgiving disposition. 

The first is the childlike temper. What is the 
precise characteristic of childhood that Jesus com- 
mends? The circumstance that He said that the 
disciple must "humble himself" and become like the 
child, does not imply that humility is the distinguish- 
ing trait, even of very little children. They can be 
as pushing, domineering and selfish as adults. That 



The Motives to Forgiveness 113 

is not the point. It is something quite different. 
The characteristic of childhood is its sense of depend- 
ence. Childhood may be selfish, but it is not self- 
sufficient. Humble yourself and realize your de- 
pendence upon God, as a helpless child realizes its 
dependence on its father and mother. That is the 
condition of greatness in the kingdom of heaven. 
That spirit strikes at the root of pride and selfish 
ambition; it sweetens the soul and makes it respon- 
sive to the call for sympathy and forgiveness. 

Again our Lord points out that this spirit will 
flow from a just perception of values. The greatest 
quality in the world is love, but the greatest thing in 
the world is human personality. When one has done 
us wrong we are very apt to look at the whole inci- 
dent in a false perspective. We think almost wholly 
of the loss, trouble or mortification the offender has 
brought us. Those are the great things in our eyes; 
indeed, it is rather difficult to think of anything else. 
Jesus says, Do not think of those things, think of the 
offender, and make it your first concern to "gain 
him' ' ; to bring him to repentance and a better mind. 
Do not leave any means untried to achieve that 
supreme end. See him first, alone; then, if he is 
obdurate, with a mutual friend, and only as a last 
resort, try the pressure of public opinion. We are 
wont to imagine, when one has wronged us, that w r e 
go a long way toward a high type of Christian virtue 
when we do not take active steps against the offender, 
but simply nurse the grudge. Jesus holds that when 
one wrongs us we are not at liberty to ignore it, or 
to say nothing about it. The wrong he has done 
puts us under the obligation of winning him back to 
righteous ways. And in "gaining our brother" we 
win the most precious thing in the world. 

Still further. Peter's insistence that there must 
be some limit to the duty of forgiveness leads Jesus, 
in the parable of the unmerciful servant, to point out 



114 The Great Ministry 

that we are to reflect in our relation to others the 
attitude of God toward ourselves. The remission of 
the great debt imposed upon the debtor the duty of 
dealing kindly with his debtor. The conduct of the 
unmerciful servant arouses the just indignation of 
every true man. And yet, when we apply the para- 
ble to ourselves we can easily evade the point. Still, 
the moment we come to a just sense of what God has 
done for us, how contemptible and despicable appear 
our hardnesses, our resentments and our grudges 
against our "fellow servants." 

According to the teaching of Jesus the forgiving 
spirit is the outcome of our sense of dependence upon 
God, of our appreciation of the worth of men, and 
of our gratitude for the divine forgiveness. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

Unresponsiveness to Truth. 

Jo. chs. 7, 8. 

Pascal remarks in his penetrating way: "What say 
the prophets of Jesus Christ? That He shall be 
manifestly God? No, but that He is the true God 
veiled; that He shall be unrecognized; that men shall 
not think that this is He ; that He shall be a stone of 
stumbling and a rock of offense." Biblical students 
too often have forgotten this. They have not seen 
with sufficient clearness that the fact that the con- 
temporaries of Je- 



sus did not recog- 
nize Him as the 
Messiah, instead of 
disproving the fore- 
casts of the proph- 
ets, is the very 
thing which the 
prophets antici- 
pated. 

A salient instance 
of the blindness of 
His countrymen to 
the real nature and 
character of Jesus 
is afforded by the treatment He received during the 
feast of tabernacles. This occasion bore some resem- 
blance to the American Thanksgiving, in that it was 
a harvest feast; but it was continued through more 
than a week, and every male was expected to attend 
it at Jerusalem. Jesus was in or near Capernaum 
when the time of this feast drew near. His own 
brothers urged Him to improve the occasion, and go 
to the capital, and then, at the height of the national 

115 




A Street in Jerusalem. 



116 The Great Ministry 

holiday, assert His Messianic claims. Though His 
brothers did not at this time believe that He was the 
Messiah, they had seen too many evidences of His 
miraculous power to think that He incurred any 
special danger in adopting their advice, and then, 
if perchance He succeeded in convincing the authori- 
ties at Jerusalem as to the truth of His claims, they 
would see their way clear to accepting Him also. 
Jesus declined this invitation of His brothers to go 
to Jerusalem with them. At the same time He told 
them that there was no good reason why they should 
not go. Accordingly they went on without Him. 
Shortly after Jesus followed them alone, "not pub- 
licly, but as it were in secret. " The first His friends 
knew of His presence in the city was when they 
found Him teaching in the temple. 

The prevailing impression that John's summary of 
Jesus' teaching on this occasion and his account of 
the attitude of the prominent men in Jerusalem makes 
upon the reader is that Jesus and His contemporaries 
moved in entirely different realms. They hardly 
understood Him more than a fish can understand 
the life of a bird; and yet such illustrations have a 
fatal defect, for their misunderstanding, their opacity 
to truth and light, were not necessary and inevitable. 
The} 7 had capacities and faculties, powers of insight 
and responsiveness that, if exercised, would have 
made them at home in the realm in which our Lord 
moved. Could they have exercised these powers? 
Could they have understood Jesus and responded to 
Him if they had chosen to do so? Such ques- 
tions, though natural and inevitable, lead us at once 
to some of the most difficult problems in philosophy 
and theology. Still, this much is perfectly clear, 
habits of thought, readiness to act from lower motives, 
the practice of a hard, formal, censorious type of 
religion had actually closed their natures to every 
spiritual approach and appeal. They realized in 



Unresponsiveness to Truth 117 

themselves that terrific penalty of worldliness, for- 
malism and self-conceit, that having eyes they saw 
not, and having ears they heard not. The faculty 
was there, but it did not function. Carlyle has some- 
where suggested that the power of recognizing moral 
worth, the faculty of appreciating spiritual values 
is the absolutely indispensable foundation of any 
religion worth talking about. "The kingdom of 
heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seek- 
ing goodly pearls; and having found one pearl of 
great price, he went and sold all that he had, and 
bought it." But the dealer in jewels must know a 
good pearl when he sees it, otherwise his purchase 
will be apt to land him in bankruptcy. The great 
difficulty with the contemporaries of Jesus was that 
they were unresponsive to spiritual values. 

There was only one man in that throng at the 
feast who acquitted himself with credit, and that was 
Nicodemus. He had the courage to ask a question 
which put him unmistakably on the side of Jesus. 
The conversation he had with Jesus months before 
has borne fruit; he has become a disciple, and his 
mind has opened to the truths that at first seemed 
so puzzling. 

Just in proportion as these men failed to respond 
to Jesus, His own assertion of His nature and claims 
became positive and unequivocal. Ingenious inter- 
pretations of these chapters may possibly succeed in 
making Jesus' assertion of His deity shadowy, but 
it was not shadowy to those who heard Him on the 
last day of the feast. Every element of vagueness 
was eliminated from their thought. They under- 
stood perfectly what He claimed for Himself. They 
charged Him with blasphemy and were eager to stone 
Him for the palpable sacrilege of asserting that He 
existed before Abraham. 

It is also important to notice how through all this 
conflict Jesus keeps clear and bright His conscious- 



118 1 he Great Ministry 

ness of His perfect relationship with His Father. 
In some aspects this fact is a more impressive indica- 
tion of His deity than His own assertion of it. At 
least we may say that it validates the assertion. 
How wonderful it is when we come to think of it! 
Many of our prayers and hymns would be incongru- 
ous on the lips of Jesus. He could not sing "Nearer, 
my God, to Thee. " He had no aspiration to know 
God better than He knew Him. or to enter into a 
closer fellowship than that which He enjoyed. And 
these teachings flow like a stream from a deep foun- 
tain. They are like a wife's speech of her husband, 
with whose heart p.nd life her own soul is in perfect 
accord. 



CHAPTER XXX. 
Fellowship and Service. 

Lu. 9:51—10:42. 

The attempt to stone Jesus at the feast of taber- 
nacles led Him to withdraw from Jerusalem and 
return to Galilee. There He found that the hostility 
which had been aroused against Him was almost as 
intense as that w r hich He had experienced at Jeru- 
salem. The chronological arrangement of the events 
of this period makes it clear that Jesus must almost 
have regarded Himself as a hunted one. There was 
no place open to Him. Jerusalem had rejected Him 
and sought His life, and Galilee, the most promising 
scene of His early ministry, had become hardly less 
hostile. At this juncture it looks as if Jesus had 
determined to go back to Jerusalem, bear His witness 
there again, and meet the result (Lu. 9:51). The 
natural route was through Samaria, but when His 
friends attempted to secure for Him a convenient 
stopping place in that territory, they were met with 
a blunt refusal. This so angered James and John 
that they would like to have re-enacted the role of 
Elijah, and consumed the inhospitable Samaritans 
by fire from heaven. It is w^orth noting that one 
of those who would commit this grave offense against 
the law of love, afterwards became the apostle of 
love. He also had a share in the other two outstand- 
ing infractions of love recorded in the gospels (Mk. 
10:35; Lu. 9:49). 

This rejection by the Samaritans led Jesus to turn 
aside for a ministry of a few weeks in Perea — 
the region to the east of the Jordan, in which the 
Gentile admixture had somewhat weakened the 
virulence of Hebrew prejudice. The company around 
Jesus at this time was sufficiently numerous to enable 

119 



120 The Great Ministry 

Him to organize a band of seventy, which He sent 
out with instructions similar to those He had pre- 
viously given the Twelve, except that He did not 
forbid them to preach to the Gentiles. 

The precise sequence of events during this period, 
concerning which there are many differences among 
New Testament scholars, is of slight importance com- 
pared with the insight into Jesus' attitude and teach- 
ing which the incidents Luke has grouped about this 
epoch reveal. 

For example, a study of these episodes puts into 
a bright light the transcendent importance of per- 
sonal relationship to Jesus Himself. It has often 
been said that this is the peculiar doctrine of the 
fourth gospel, but is it not also the clue that explains 
many important features of the other three? 

It is hardly possible to imagine a more insistent 
emphasis upon this truth than we have in the story 
of the three inquirers (Lu. 9:57-62). The moral con- 
viction that one should devote himself to the service 
of Jesus so stands in a class by itself, that it is like a 
royal invitation which supersedes all other engage- 
ments. All questions of wealth, of family ties and 
of friendship are subordinate to it. The call to 
follow the soul's Master transcends every other con- 
sideration (Prov. 8:36). 

The way Jesus greeted the report of the Seventy 
on their return from their evangelistic tour illustrates 
the same truth. They were elated, and exulted: 
"Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy 
name. " But He pointed out that the ultimate 
reason for rejoicing was not what they could do in 
His name, but that, through personal relationship to 
Him and enlistment in His service, their names were 
written in heaven (Lu. 10:17-20). 

The episode at the home of Martha and Mary 
illuminates the same truth. The assiduous care of 
Martha for the physical comfort of the Guest was 



Fellowship and Service 121 

commendable, but sympathetic responsiveness to 
His word and spirit betokened even a deeper appreci- 
ation of Him (Lu. 10:38-42). And from this appre- 
ciation was to come that superb act of loving devo- 
tion which has perfumed the world (Jo. 12:3). A 
missionary in the far west, from the land of the cactus 
and the sagebrush, recently said, "Men say that we 
need railroads and cities, with warehouses and shops 
and factories and residences; we need churches and 
schools and colleges; we need happy homes and strong 
men and gracious women and lovely children, and 
art and music. Yes, we need these things in Arizona 
and New Mexico, but after all, there is only one 
thing we need, and that is water. Give us water and 




From a photograph. 

The Road from Jerusalem to Jericho. 

we shall have plenteous harvests and railroads and 
cities, schools and churches, and Christian homes 
and music. Water is what we need, and we shall 
have everything else, if w r e have water. " That is 
Jesus' conception of His own relationship to human 
life. Fellowship with Himself is the one thing need- 
ful, and out of that fellowship comes the inspiration 
to all strong and beautiful human service. And it 
is because Jesus holds the relationship to God that 
is expressed in the prayer which Luke assigns to this 
period (Lu. 10:21-23) that He sustains this relation- 
ship to human life. 



122 The Great Ministry 

Let us remember that the parable of the good 
Samaritan stands in immediate association with the 
unfolding of this high spiritual truth. It is em- 
bedded in the exposition as a fly in amber. Do men 
say, The religion of the good Samaritan is all the 
religion I want? But whence comes that religion 
except from fellowship with Christ? After the San 
Francisco earthquake the actors gave "benefits" for 
the sufferers, and men said, "What a fine, noble 
thing to do!" And it was. But the remark of an 
eminent minister on the Pacific coast was in point. 
"It took an earthquake to inspire the actors to do 
that, but that is the sort of thing that Christian 
churches are doing all the time, under the impulse of 
Christian love, when there is no dramatic appeal, 
and no special emergency but the perpetual one of 
commonplace poverty and suffering. " 



CHAPTER XXXI. 
Our Lord's Witness to Himself. 

Jo. chs. 9, 10. 

The plain implication of the chronological hints 
given by the Evangelists is that Jerusalem — the his- 
toric capital of Judaism, and the center of its religious 
life and worship — possessed an insuperable attraction 
for Jesus. He seems to have withdrawn from it re- 
peatedly, when an outbreak against Him became too 
threatening; but, in a short space, He returned to 
take up His ministry there afresh. He seems to have 
felt that nothing He could accomplish in the provin- 
cial cities or in the outlying country could make up 
for the loss of His witness in Jerusalem. The city 
of David must accept or reject him. If He was to 
be a sacrifice, it must be upon the historic altar of 
Jehovah. 

Accordingly, about two months after the feast of 
tabernacles, we find Jesus again in Jerusalem, and by 
an act of mercy upon a man born blind He was brought 
into sharp antagonism with the religious leaders (Jo. 
ch. 9). There were two features of this miracle which 
particularly exasperated His enemies. One was that 
there was no possibility of denying the reality of the 
miracle. This is the one miracle in the gospel narra- 
tive which was subjected to a judicial inquiry. The 
judges were most unfriendly, but the evidence of all 
the witnesses left no room for doubt as to the reality 
of the miracle. The only explanation that these keen 
and partisan critics of what had taken place could 
offer was that Jesus had a demon (Jo. 10:20, 21). 

The other feature of this incident which enraged 
the Pharisees was that this notable cure was wrought 
on the Sabbath. The Sabbath question, as we have 
seen, was the source of some of the deepest and bitter- 

123 



124 



The Great Ministry 



est antagonisms on the part of the contemporaries of 
our Lord against Him. They realized that the keep- 
ing of the Sabbath was the pivotal factor in the in- 
tegrity and perpetuity of Judaism. And more than 
this, after the manner of those whose faith is losing 

* "te^«*%g S " J itsspiritualquality ' 



they held the more 
tenaciously to its 
formal and ceremo- 
nial features. In- 
deed the narrative 
shows that they 
were willing to put 
aside incontroverti- 
ble evidence, be- 
cause it conflicted 
with their narrow 
construction of a 
ceremonial require- 




The Pool of Siloam. 



ment. Their declaration, "This man is not from God, 
because he keepeth not the sabbath" (Jo. 9:16), is a 
classic illustration of the power of a formal religion 
to blind the eyes to spiritual realities. 

The discourses of Jesus reported in the tenth chap- 
ter are suggested by the fact that these men, through 
their hard, formal and unsympathetic attitude toward 
spiritual things, had lost the power of appreciating 
moral values. They were blind while thinking that 
they could see (Jo. 9:39-41); they did not hear and 
respond to the voice of the Good Shepherd (Jo. 10: 
14). It is from this point of view that we gain a just 
insight as to our Lord's conception of the gravest re- 
sult of sin. It is that a man may lose the sense of 
spiritual values; the power of moral discrimination. 
In His own graphic description, the faculties 
possessed by the soul may cease to function, having 
eyes they may not see, and having ears they may 
not hear. 



Our Lord's Witness to Himself 125 

The story of the healing of the man born blind, and 
of the subsequent judicial inquiry, is told with a skill 
which places the ninth chapter of John's gospel among 
the great passages in the world's literature. Every 
word is chosen with the nice sense of an artist, and 
every stroke contributes something of worth to the 
total impression, and yet we are aware, throughout, 
that the composition is the report of an eye-witness, 
and not the reproduction of an imaginary episode. 
For example, how true to life is the way the people 
who had known the blind man refer to him. What 
had impressed them about him was not so much the 
fact that he was blind, but that he was a beggar, and 
had annoyed them many times, probably, with his im- 
portunities. And so when the "neighbors" seek to 
identify him they do not refer at all to his blindness, 
but to his begging. "The neighbors therefore, and 
they that saw him aforetime, that he was a beggar, 
said, Is not this he that sat and begged" (Jo. 9:8)? 
That is a touch hardly possible to any but an eye-wit- 
ness. 

The outstanding feature, however, of the account 
of the miracle, of the inquiry and of the subsequent 
discourses, which by no means should escape our at- 
tention, is the absolute clearness and deflniteness with 
w r hich Jesus now advances His Messianic claim. He 
asserts that He is "the light of the w r orld" (Jo. 9:5); 
He declares that He is "the Son of God" (Jo. 9:35- 
38) ; He is " the good shepherd, " who lays down His 
life for the sheep (Jo. 10:11); He gives "eternal life" 
(Jo. 10:28); He is one with the Father (Jo. 10:30). 
His hearers did not misinterpret the significance of 
these assertions. "For a good work Ave stone thee 
not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, be- 
ing a man, makest thyself God" (Jo. 10:33). 

This text throws a clear light upon the real signifi- 
cance of the claims of Jesus. He could not have 
suffered Himself to be misunderstood. That would 



126 The Great Ministry 

have been a grave injustice to Himself and to those 
who heard Him. They did not misunderstand Him. 
He advanced the most absolute and unequivocal 
claim to the prerogatives of deity. That was His 
stupendous witness to Himself during this visit to 
Jerusalem. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

True Ax\d False Religion. 

Lu. 11:1-13, 37-54; ch. 12. 

Principal Fairbairn has well said: ''Looked at on 
the surtace the conflict of Jesus with the Jews seems 
but an ignoble waste of the noblest Being earth has 
known." That is just the way the reports of these 
antagonisms strike the modern student. And yet, we 
have to remember that human nature has not changed 
an iota since the days of Jesus. The Pharisees are 
types of men now living and acting in New York and 
London and Berlin. In all our villages there are nar- 
row-minded formalists, hypocrites, whose animating 
principle is downright covetousness. The men Jesus 
confronted and rebuked, who finally succeeded in com- 
passing His death, were simply representatives of the 
world spirit. Judaism is not singular in that it sen- 
tenced Him to the cross. Judaism could not have 
done that without the approval of Rome, and we well 
know how Athens had treated its great prophet four 
centuries before this time. The conflict, which the 
narratives of the Evangelists bring before us, is indeed 
ignoble, but its sordidness, its meanness, its dishonor, 
are simply the qualities that characterize the world 
spirit in its perpetual struggle against truth and right- 
eousness. 

The instructions and rebukes of Jesus during the 
Perean ministry, which followed His withdrawal from 
Jerusalem after the feast of dedication (Jo. 10:40), 
take on a sharper edge than heretofore for tw r o rea- 
sons. Perea, on account of its mixed Hebrew and 
Gentile population, became the field in which the spirit 
of Pharisaism was accentuated; and, at this time, it 
was clear beyond doubt that the current of events was 

127 



128 The Great Ministry 

carrying Jesus to some violent end. In this region, 
therefore, Jesus confronted some of the most ignoble 
phases of Pharisaism, and He expressed Himself with 
the absolute fidelity that would mark one who had 
nothing to evade. 

Jesus summed up the inner spirit and genius of 
Pharisaism in one biting word — "hypocrisy." The 
primary meaning of the Greek word is "to answer," 
and then, "to personate any one, to play a part." "A 
hypocrite," therefore, signifies one whose words and 
actions are intended to mislead others as to his real 
character and motives. It is easy to see how such 
a man will develop the precise vices that Jesus detected 
and exposed in the Pharisees. These vices have a 
genetic, inevitable relation to the ruling principle of 
the life. For example, a hypocrite will be exceedingly 
punctilious in observing the forms of religion (Lu. 11: 
39, 42); he will make a parade of himself and of his 
observances (Lu. 11:43); he will be heartless, to the 
point of oppression, in his relation with his less privi- 
leged fellows (Lu. 1 1 :46) ; he will separate totally his 
morality from his religion (Lu. 11:42); since he does 
not really believe in the reality of the things to 
which he pretends to be devoted, he will use his oppor- 
tunities to the utmost to acquire the things in which 
he really does believe, namely, material possessions 
(Lu. 12:15; 16:14). That is why religious hypocrites 
are almost invariably very covetous. Their energies 
are applied to getting the things they actually believe 
in, with a faint regard to the morality of the means 
they employ, provided the nature of their transactions 
is not made public. 

Students of the life of Jesus have sometimes won- 
dered that He should have dealt so tenderly with men 
and women who were frankly evil, and made no pre- 
tension to being other than they actually were. The 
reason is plain. Such persons move with a certain 
candor and directness, toward good as well as evil. 



True and False Religion 129 

The poison of indirection, of false pretenses, of self- 
deception is not corroding their spirits. 

On the other hand, it is well to reflect that those 
who are really devoted to righteousness, but, for one 
reason or another, suffer themselves to be reckoned 
with those who are indifferent to it, are also guilty of 
a very subtile and dishonorable hypocrisy. There is 
only one possible course for a true man, and that is 
to pretend nothing, but to speak and act in conformity 
with his real convictions, to be sincere and genuine, 
through and through. 

With a delicate insight Luke, in selecting the ma- 
terials for his report of the Perean ministry, puts over 
against the account of our Lord's exposure and de- 
nunciation of the Pharisees, that beautiful episode in 
which He taught the disciples how to pray (Lu. 11: 
1-4). That is one thing a hypocrite cannot do. He 
can wash his body; he can keep the Sabbath; he can 
pay his tithes, but he cannot pray. The power of 
really praying is the sovereign test of the spiritual 
life (Acts 9:11). To say of another that he is "a man 
of prayer' ' enables us to classify him at once ; we know 
where he belongs; the phrase gives us a deep insight 
into his spirit. 

The encouragements to prayer that Jesus gave His 
disciples (Lu. 11:5-13) disclose the heart of the genu- 
ine religious spirit. The follower of Jesus comes to 
God as a child to his father. His confidence in God 
has all the simplicity and directness of a son's trust 
in his father's good will toward him. That spirit of 
living faith in God is the exact opposite of the temper 
of the hypocrite. And the life growing out of it, 
manifesting itself in word and deed, is wholesome, 
sincere, genuine. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

The Use of Privilege. 
Lu. chs. 13, 14. 

In Luke's account of the Perean ministry he selects 
incidents which bear upon two leading topics — our 
Lord's analysis and unveiling of the Pharisaic spirit, 
and His doctrine as to the use of privileges. The 
latter is the theme which runs, like a cord on which 
pearls are strung, through the thirteenth and four- 
teenth chapters. 

Some one, for a reason that can only be surmised, 
desired His comment on the suffering of the Galileans 
who had provoked the vengeance of Pilate. His reply 
forever disposed of that false and easy philosophy 
that the disasters of life are invariably the measure 
of the moral quality of those who experience them. 
But He does not leave the matter there. He asserts, 
in the most unequivocal way, that all such speculative 
questions are of minor importance compared with obe- 
dience to the call of present duty (Lu. 13:5). This 
truth is strikingly enforced by the parable of the bar- 
ren fig tree (Lu. 13:6-9), in which the call of duty 
is reinforced by the enjoyment of special privilege. 
The tree is spared, though it does not bear fruit, but it 
is to be cut down as "a cumberer of the ground" when 
it does not respond to peculiar privileges. The lesson 
to our Lord's contemporaries was plain enough, but 
perhaps we to-day do not always appreciate that the 
ground of our severest condemnation may be our fail- 
ure to respond to peculiar privileges, or our misuse 
of them. 

Luke selects from his material three outstanding in- 
cidents which illustrate the urgency of the demand 
for the right and full use of one's gifts and oppor- 
tunities. 

130 



The Use of Privilege 131 

In the first instance we see that this demand is su- 
perior to all ceremonial limitations. Our Lord was 
confronted by a woman whose condition enlisted the 
sympathy of every right feeling man, whom it was 
within His power to heal. At once He loosed her 
from her infirmity. But it was the Sabbath when He 
wrought this cure. His eager critics were alert to 
make the utmost of this fact against Him. It often 
seems to students of the gospels as if our Lord were 
put to death chiefly because of the freedom with 
which He used the Sabbath. The answer of Jesus to 
the cavil was unanswerable. Acting in accordance 
with the dictates of wholesome human instincts men 
do not have any compunction that they are doing vio- 
lence to moral requirement in loosing their oxen or 
asses and leading them away to watering on the Sab- 
bath. The ceremonial requirement is to be inter- 
preted by the ethical intuition, not the latter by the 
former. The application of this principle (Lu. 13: 
16) was so conclusive that Luke, who, usually, like 
the first two Evangelists, avoids all characterization 
of the inward experiences of those who came into 
contact with Jesus, simply contenting himself with re- 
cording what they said and did, reports that ''all his 
adversaries were put to shame" (Lu. 13:17). The 
teaching can hardly be misunderstood. The power 
to help men is a divine charter that takes precedence 
of all ceremonial requirements or manufactured pro- 
prieties. Men are bound to do what God has equipped 
them to do. And it is from the free, independent use 
of these God-given powers that the kingdom of God 
is established — outwardly growing like the mustard 
seed into a generous tree, inwardly permeating and 
transforming human life and conditions like the leaven 
in the meal (Lu. 13:18-21). 

To take a single instance, if John Wesley had not 
been profoundly influenced by this teaching of Jesus, 
if he had not disregarded the alleged right of the 



132 The Great Ministry 

English bishop to restrict his benevolent activities, 
how much would have been lost to modern Christian- 
ity? In his famous essay on von Ranke's History 
of the Popes Lord Macaulay calls attention to the 
strange incapacity of historic Protestantism to assimi- 
late and utilize the powers of men for human helpful- 
ness that are not within the lines of a cult. There is 
too much truth in the criticism. The partial alien- 
ation, or at least separation, from the Protestant 
churches of some of the most beneficent activities of 
our time is a case in point. It is always easy for 
narrow-minded men to say, " There are six days in 
which men ought to work: in them therefore come 
and be healed" (Lu. 13:14). 

Our Lord's answer to the question, "Are they few 
that are saved?" (Lu. 13:23) shows that the moral 
use of one's strength and privileges is far more im- 
portant than the solution of even interesting and 
weighty problems of thought. The inquirer may have 
meant, as his question is commonly interpreted, "Is 
the number of those finally to be saved large or small?" 
Or he may have inquired as to the success of Jesus' 
work: Are there few who are ow r ning you as the Mes- 
siah, and entering the kingdom you are seeking to 
establish? But, whatever the precise import of the 
query, the significance of the answer is clear. The 
important thing is not to know this or that detail about 
the kingdom of God, but actually to enter it, to be 
responsive to its motives, to share its fellowship. And 
then follows one of the most important declarations 
in the New Testament in its bearing upon the possi- 
bility that there may be a time when no striving will 
avail to bring one within the kingdom (Lu. 13:25-30). 

Still further, our Lord's answer to those who 
warned Him of His peril at the hands of Herod (Lu. 
13:31) shows that the right and full use of one's 
powers and privileges is supreme over all considera- 
tions of personal safety. The answer is not one of 



The Use of Privilege 133 

the most frequently quoted sentences of Jesus, but it 
is one that has given courage to many a heroic soul, 
who, in his hour of stress, has been conscious, through 
it, of unusual fellowship with his master. "Neverthe- 
less I must go on my way to-day, and to-morrow and 
the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet 
perish out of Jerusalem" (Lu. 13:33). And the mood 
in which these words were spoken was not one of 
cold defiance — a mood which it is so easy to mistake 
for the noblest — but one of unutterable love and regret 
that found expression in the lament over Jerusalem 
(Lu. 13:34). 

The disposition, however, to use one's privileges 
worthily may be easily vitiated by self-consciousness 
(Lu. 14:7) and by the desire for a social return (Lu. 
14:12). The true disciple does not push his claims 
to be honored by others, but takes the lowest place, 
and uses his powers for the service of those least able 
to return an equivalent (Lu. 14:12-24). Perhaps the 
menace of social upheaval, which some in our own 
time deem imminent, would be less threatening if 
those to whom God has given peculiar advantages had 
been more uniformly inspired with the spirit of social 
service which Jesus enjoined. 

The teaching, then, of our Lord is that the right 
and full use of the gifts of God, is more important 
than conformity to any ceremonial, more important 
than the solution of any problems of curiosity or re- 
flection, and more important than any considerations 
of personal safety, but this use must be with self- 
forgetfulness and in the spirit of the broadest altruism. 
Or, if from a little different point of view we ask how 
would Jesus have men use their powers, the answer 
is independently, spiritually, courageously, modestly, 
and in the temper of the most generous sympathy with 
men as men. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 
The Joy of God. 

Lu. chs 15, 16. 

We are in danger of missing many valuable in- 
sights as to the significance and relationships of the 
words of Jesus if we do not pay careful attention to all 
the hints as to the occasion on which He uttered the 
sentences we may be studying, and as to His purpose 
in speaking as He did. 

This suggestion is particularly necessary in consid- 
ering the three beautiful parables of grace, which 
Luke has preserved in his fifteenth chapter. We may 
remark in passing that these parables are as noble 
examples of narrative literature as can be found any- 
where. There is not a word in the chapter that does 
not make its own contribution to the picture Jesus 
would set before us. 

The occasion of these parables was the criticism, 
which Jesus often met, that He did not consort with 
the right kind of people. Probably He often heard 
whispered the equivalent of the modern proverb that 
a man is known by the company he keeps. If Jesus 
were what He set Himself forth to be, and what some 
believed Him to be, why did He not associate with 
the acknowledged representatives of purity and re- 
spectability, and cease having social intercourse with 
outcasts? These parables are our Lord's answer to 
that criticism and innuendo. The precise significance 
of His rejoinder should not be overlooked. At the 
close of each parable He states or implies that He is 
describing the conditions that bring joy to the heart 
of God. God rejoices over the repentant sinner, as 
the shepherd over rescuing the sheep that had strayed 
(Lu. 15:7), as the woman over finding the coin she 
had dropped or mislaid (Lu. 15:10), as the father 

' 134 



The Joy of God 1 3 S 

over the return home of the wayward son (Lu. IS: 
22, 23, 32). The point, then, of Jesus' answer is that 
God rejoices over the sinner that repents. Hence, in 
associating with sinful men that He may bring them 
to repentance, Jesus is doing the thing which is su- 
premely pleasing to God. The answer is complete and 
conclusive, and it lifts the whole topic of their cavil 
into the clear bright light of eternal relationships. 

But these parables go further than answering the 
criticism of the Pharisees, they suggest the reasons 
why God has this joy in repentant souls. The reasons 
are that men belong to God and have value in His 
sight. Just as the sheep belonged to the shepherd, the 
coin to the woman, the son to the father, so man as 
man, not as white or yellow or black, not as good or 
bad, but man as man, belongs to God. Sometimes 
theologians have spoken as if the ownership of man 
were somewhere else than in God, as if man owned 
himself, or Satan owned him. However such mean- 
ings may be tortured from a few texts of Scripture, the 
ruling representation of the Hebrew and Christian 
revelations is that man belongs to God. Deep down 
below every other relationship is the permanent essen- 
tial tie between God and the soul. God made men, 
and He has no disposition to evade or transfer His 
responsibility for them. Men belong to God, and He 
constantly asserts His ownership. 

The other fact, which the representations of Jesus 
imply, is that men are precious in the sight of God. 
It is conceivable that God, like men, should have those 
belonging to Him who were not dear to Him. Most 
men, in one way or another, have had some experi- 
ence of that unhappy relationship. They have been 
bound by strong ties to those for whom they did not 
really and deeply care. But that, says Jesus, is not 
the relationship of God to men. He cares. Just as 
the shepherd goes out into the wilderness to find the 
sheep, just as the woman spares no pains to discover 



136 The Great Ministry 

the coin, just as the father is always desiring and 
looking for the son's return, God cares for men. He 
wants the normal relationship between Himself and 
them established. He wants them as sons in the 
Father's house. 

Just here we come very near to the heart of the 
Christian revelation. The teaching of Jesus is unique 
in the emphasis that it places upon the worth of the 
human soul, upon the value of personality, upon the 
preciousness of life. And Jesus grounds this appre- 
ciation, not like Shakespeare upon the wonder of 
man's powers, not like Pascal upon the implications 
of the fact of self-consciousness, but upon the precious- 
ness of man in the sight of God. No prophet in the 
entire range of Hebrew history ever began to appre- 
hend, as Jesus did, the significance of that tremendous 
assertion — take it for all in all the most momentous 
and pregnant sentence that ever fell from human lips 
— -that man was made in the image of God. 

The clear and sympathetic understanding of this 
truth puts the great problems of human life and the 
great questions of philosophy and religion in a new 
perspective. It is not unfair to say that the theolo- 
gian or the exegete who does not look at sin and re- 
demption from this position of Jesus lacks the .clue 
for appreciating His message or His work. 

And we must not think that this revelation that 
man belongs to God, and is dear to God, has no bear- 
ing upon actual human duty. This disclosure brings 
to bear upon human life the noblest motive to right- 
eousness. The great difference between the ethnic 
faiths and Christianity, as we have seen before, is this: 
The former say, Do good, practice righteousness in 
order that you may gain the divine favor. Christian- 
ity says, Do good, practice righteousness because you 
have the divine favor (Phil. 2:12, 13; 2 Cor. 7:1). 
"While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 
5:8). The Gospel is primarily a revelation of the 



The Joy of God 137 

grace of God to sinful men. And because it is this 
it makes the profoundest and most vital appeal to 
men to respond in the use of opportunities, and in 
deeds of righteousness to the love of God. 

This gives us the clue to the connection between 
the three parables of grace in the fifteenth chapter of 
Luke and the two parables of warning which follow. 
In the parable of the shrewd steward (Lu. 16:1-12), 
our Lord enforces the duty of making the wisest use 
of present opportunities; in the parable of Lazarus 
and the rich man (Lu. 16:19-31) He makes it vividly 
clear that no self-indulgent conventional righteousness 
makes a worthy response to the love of God (Lu. 16: 
12-16). 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

The Lord of Life and of Death. 

Jo. 11:1-54. 

Every one of our Lord's miracles is closely associ- 
ated with some disclosure of the attitude of God to- 
ward men, or with the revelation of some aspect of 
Jesus' character or mission. No one of them is a 
mere wonder, disassociated from spiritual truth. If 
we were constrained to cut out of the New Testament 
the miracles of Jesus we should be deprived of some 
of the profoundest insights which the Bible affords of 
the principles, methods and purposes according to 




Modern Bethany. 



From a photograph. 



which God works, and we should lose some of the 
clearest glimpses of the character of Jesus, not merely 
as endowed with superhuman power, but as a moral 
personality. The feeding of the multitudes, the giv- 
ing of sight to the man born blind, and the raising of 
Lazarus withdraw from the face of God the veil which 
the senses weave. 

Those who knew Jesus most intimately had the 
strongest faith in Him as divine. This fact reverses 
many ordinary experiences. Distance did not lend 
enchantment to Him. The nearer men came to Him, 

138 



The Lord of Life and of Death 139 

the more impressive and convincing became the valid- 
ity of His claims. If the episode (Lu. 10:38-42) in 
which Mary, rather than her sister, is described as 
having chosen "the good part" leaves an unfavorable 
impression as to Martha, that prejudice vanishes on 
reading the words with which Martha addressed Jesus 
when He reached Bethany, four days after the death 
of Lazarus. "If thou hadst been here, my brother 
had not died" (Jo. 11:21). Evidently the sisters had 
been repeating something like this to each other dur- 
ing the tedious hours they had been waiting for Jesus' 
response to their message (Jo. 11:3), for Mary says 
the same thing a little later (Jo. 11:32). Though this 
sentiment may not have been entirely original with 
Martha, she adopts it as the expression of her own 
conviction, and adds to it the confidence, "And even 
now I know that, whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, 
God will give thee" (Jo. 11:22). 

But Jesus does not accept this beautiful confidence 
in Himself as a full expression of the faith He desires. 
The days are passing swiftly during which He can be 
with them. The training and experience of the past 
are now sufficient to enable them to bear the full 
truth. The conviction that He is one whom God will 
hear is not enough. He Himself is the fountain of 
life. "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and 
the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet 
shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on 
me shall never die ' ' (Jo . 11:25,26). Martha was 
ready for this ultimate disclosure, and she responded 
in words that match the supreme confessions (Mt. 14: 
33; 16:16; Jo. 6:69). Indeed, in some aspects this 
is the great confession of the gospel narrative, for it 
was born, not of speculation, but out of the heart of 
bitter personal experience. It meant implicit con- 
fidence that Jesus was Lord of life. 

It is worth noticing how the doctrine of the Messiah- 
ship of Jesus is woven into the texture of the gospels. 



140 The Great Ministry 

Possibly by the exercise of rare critical skill one may 
succeed in cutting out of the gospels a few texts that 
explicitly assert this high truth. But that exploit 
does not eliminate the doctrine from the records. It 
is inwrought in their substance, like the threads of 
silk in a United States bank-note. You cannot sepa- 
rate those threads from the paper without destroying 
the money. This doctrine is not in the New Testa- 
ment like an alloy whch may be separated from the 
gold by the processes of the crucible. It is in the New 
Testament like the scarlet thread in every cord and 
cable used by the British Navy. You cannot dissect 
out that thread without destroying the rope through 
which it runs. 

John's description of the conduct of the sisters is 
Shakespearean in its clear realization of temperaments 
and their reactions upon circumstances. The active 
Martha is the one to meet Jesus, while her sister "sat 
still in the house." And it is Martha who gives ex- 
pression to their common thought, and rises to the 
height of a great confession. At the same time it is 
Martha whose "sense realism," for a moment, puts 
her faith in the background, at the improbability that 
one who had been dead four days can be restored to 
life (Jo. 11:39). On the other hand, the contempla- 
tive Mary is true to her character throughout. Soli- 
tude and meditation are necessary to her. The out- 
ward fact slowly penetrates into the inner experience ; 
slowly reshapes and colors it. When she sees Jesus, 
she can only say what her sister has said before (Jo. 1 1 : 
32) ; she has no other words. The surging heart can- 
not express itself but in falling at His feet, and in the 
relief of tears (Jo. 11:32, 33). Only the greatest dra- 
matic artists, like Sophocles and Shakespeare, are 
capable of conceiving a personality so sharply that 
the actions attributed to it are perfectly congruous 
with the temperament. There is little evidence that 
the writer of the fourth gospel was such an artist. 



The Lord of Life and of Death 141 

Indeed, he seems to have been somewhat deficient in 
this power. How, then, did he accomplish this 
amazing result? May it not be because the eleventh 
chapter is not a work of imagination, as some have 
charged, but a description of actual occurrences? 
Martha and Mary are described as acting in conformity 
with their temperaments, because he saw how these 
women acted. The results of literary criticism of the 
gospels are by no means uniformly hostile to their 
historicity. 

No one can describe a miracle. John does not at- 
tempt to do so. He only gives us a few external de- 
tails that help us to realize the scene, — the weeping 
sisters, the throng of critical and unbelieving Jews, 
with here and there a countenance upon which the 
light of a troubled faith has begun to break, and among 
them all, Jesus, conscious of His nature, and yet so 
sympathetic with the grief of those He loves that He 
mingled His tears with theirs. 

The great significance of this miracle does not lie 
in precisely the direction commonly attributed to it. 
It does not prove the resurrection of the dead, for 
what came to Lazarus was a return to this life, with 
all its limitations and its inevitable close, not a resur- 
rection into the higher life. The exact value of this 
astounding miracle is that it authenticates the valid- 
ity of the stupendous claim of Jesus to be Himself 
' 'the resurrection and the life"; it vindicates the 
trustworthiness of the promise, "Whosoever liveth 
and believeth on me shall never die " (Jo. 11:26). Or, 
to put it in another way, the significance of this 
miracle is its resplendent attestation to Jesus' posses- 
sion of the prerogative of God, the Lordship of life 
and death. It was the convincingness of this demon- 
stration that carried the opposition of the Pharisees 
to its climax. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

The Mind of the Master. 

Lu. 17:11—18:17. 

The precise chronology of the events whch Luke 
has grouped about our Lord's final journey to Jerusa- 
lem is not so important as might at first appear. It 
is not even necessary to suppose that all these occur- 
rences took place at this period. What Luke is seek- 
ing to do is not to give us an itinerary or a diary, but 
to illustrate the temper in which Jesus advanced to 
the cross; and it may well be that an event or saying 
which chronologically should be dated months before 
is narrated in this connection; just as an event which 
took place in Lincoln's early manhood illustrates the 
mood and disposition with which he carried the bur- 
dens of the last months of his life quite as clearly as 
anything he did or said during those final weeks. 
Luke has a principle of selection and classification 
but it is not that of time, except when the time order 
serves the purpose for which he writes. 

Luke, then, would have us recognize four great 
convictions dominant in the thought of Jesus at this 
critical epoch. One was that He need not expect 
from men in general any large gratitude even in re- 
turn for the most conspicuous services. The episode 
of the healing of the ten lepers put this fact into salient 
relief. No physical benefit could be greater than the 
one that had come to them, but of the ten only one 
was so deeply moved that every consideration of cere- 
monial requirement, or even of precise obedience to 
the command of Jesus was swept away and forgotten 
by the imperious demand of the grateful heart. It 
is sometimes said that it is legalistic and formal to 
insist upon too precise conformity to the commands of 
Jesus. But there is only one situation in which the 

142 



The Mind of the Master 143 

commands of Jesus are superseded in the Christian 
heart; that is not when those commands cross our 
comfort or convenience, but when they have created 
a new ethical and spiritual response, just as in the 
soul of this Samaritan the irrepressible impulse of 
gratitude brought him back to Jesus before he had 
obeyed the command to show himself to the priest 
(Lu. 17:14, 15). It is plain that Jesus was under no 
illusions as to the workings of human nature. In His 
mind the conduct of the men was typical of what He 
might expect at the hands even of those whom He 
had greatly blessed. The significant thing is that with 
no illusions as to how men would act He pressed on- 
ward to the cross. 

Another conviction in the mind of Jesus was the 
certainty of the coming of His kingdom. One might 
expect that on the way to Jerusalem, with the tragic 
close of His own life becoming clearer, His vision of 
His kingdom would become blurred and troubled. The 
waters ruffled by the wind reflect only confused images 
and the menace of peril disturbs and shatters in the 
souls of men their vision of the future. But the con- 
fidence of Jesus as to His own nature and work was 
so secure and ultimate that the shadow of the cross 
instead of darkening the future illuminated it. No 
one of the Evangelists has failed to notice this. The 
clearest delineations of the inevitableness and vic- 
tory of His kingdom, the certainty of "the reve- 
lation of the Son of man" belong in this period (Lu. 
17:20-37). 

Still further, this is the time when the confidence of 
Jesus in the power of prayer was unabated. The 
problem of prayer reaches down to the heart of the 
profoundest questions of theology. It involves one's 
view of the nature of God and of His relation to the 
universe; it involves an estimate of human nature, 
and of the relation between man and God. The para- 
bles of the unjust judge, and of the Pharisee and the 



144 The Great Ministry 

publican (Lu. 18:1-14) throw a penetrating light into 
the mind of Jesus. The purpose of the first is explic- 
itly stated. It was to show men "that they ought 
always to pray, and not to faint" (Lu. 18:1), and there 
is no passage of the Scripture more fatal than this to 
the view that prayer has no power to make things 
other than they would have been without it. The 
second parable inculcates the humble, trustful attitude 
of soul toward God which is the very genius of true 
prayer. The proud, self-satisfied, self-righteous spirit 
does not touch the heart of God, but the penitent soul 
that recognizes its own sin moves His heart. It means 
much for the faith of the world in prayer that Luke 
should tell us that near the time when Jesus felt that 
the Father had forsaken Him these parables interpret 
His confidence in the prayer of the humble and trust- 
ful heart. 

And then Luke tells us that the shadow of the 
cross did not blind the eyes of Jesus to the sweetness 
and beauty of unsullied human life. The incident of 
the blessing of the children is a gift to the spiritual 
imagination of the world. No matter what our theo- 
ries of depravity, Wordsworth interprets the thought 
of our Lord when he declares that heaven lies about 
us in our infancy. The child is nearer God than man, 
and men must show something of the relationship to 
God that little children have to enter the kingdom of 
God. As we bend over the cradles of our own chil- 
dren the heart of fatherhood and motherhood answers 
to the act of Jesus. In those dark hours the sense 
of the beauty and wonder of humanity was in the 
heart of Jesus, and it may well have been that the 
little children, whom He blessed, brought Him a 
vision and a strength that no friend or disciple could 
impart. 

And so the thought of man as he is, illustrated in the 
men who show no gratitude for the greatest benefit, 
has set over against it in the mind of Jesus the thought 



The Mind of the Master 145 

of man as he comes from God. And these two 
thoughts of man, coupled with Jesus' confidence in 
His Kingdom and in the power of prayer, open a 
window into His spirit, and help explain the serene 
courage with which He went to Jerusalem. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

The Rewards of the Kingdom. 

Mt. 19:16—20:28. 

The disciples of Jesus, and that larger company of 
followers who were attached to Him by ties of wonder, 
admiration and genuine spiritual insight, believed that 
the final journey to Jerusalem was to issue in the im- 
mediate establishment of the Messianic kingdom. The 
warnings of Jesus that this was not to be the case, 

but that, on the con- 
trary, his own death 
was imminent as the re- 
sult of this journey, fell 
upon incredulous ears. 
They were wholly un- 
able to understand such 
an issue of such a life. 
If they understood what 
His words meant they 
did not apprehend their 
import. His forecast of 
His death belonged to a 
realm of experience to 
which nothing in their 
own lives or in their out- 
look afforded any par- 
allel. 

It is natural, there- 
fore, that the conversation of Jesus with disciples, 
and would-be disciples, during these last days of 
His ministry should turn upon some phase of the 
question of rewards. This was not because Jesus 
turned their thoughts into these channels, but be- 
cause these were the directions in which their 
thoughts already were running. 

146 




Head of Christ. 

From Hofmann's picture of "Christ and the 
Rich Young Ruler." 



The Rewards of the Kingdom 147 

From a study of these conversations we shall find 
that there emerge three great principles regulative of 
rewards in the kingdom of God. 

The first is illustrated in the conversation with the 
rich man. There is no reason to believe that he was 
not absolutely sincere in his question, ''Good master, 
what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal 
life?" There loomed up before his mental eye the 
supreme and splendid reward of the kingdom of God. 
He saw it and believed in it. How was he to obtain 
it? The reply of Jesus, starting with the command- 
ments, was admirably adapted to quicken his spirit- 
ual consciousness, but mere commandment keeping is 
not the fulfilment of the law. The spirit is more 
important than the letter, and the spirit of love and 
self-sacrifice is the vital thing. Jesus touched the cen- 
ter of the man's need with the point of a needle when 
He said, "If thou w r ouldst be perfect, go, sell that 
which thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt 
have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Mt. 
19:21). It is the spirit of unselfishness, of self-sac- 
rifice and self-devotion which brings one within the 
circle of the rewards of the kingdom. 

But this answer suggests a still deeper question. It 
occurred at once to Peter, who doubtless heard the 
conversation with the wealthy inquirer. What are 
the precise rewards of those who willingly have made 
conspicuous sacrifices for the kingdom? "Lo, we 
have left all, and followed thee; what then shall we 
have" (Mt. 19:27)? To this question Jesus made a 
twofold answer. In the first place, no genuine follower 
will fail to receive a splendid reward (Mt. 19:28, 29); 
but this reward will not be proportioned to external 
service but to the spirit in w^hich that service was 
performed. The parable of the servants clearly illus- 
trates this point. The significant word in the parable 
is "agreed" (Mt.20:2, 13). The householder made an 
agreement, a bargain, with those whom he engaged 



148 The Great Ministry 

early in the morning. Those who went to work at 
later hours made no bargain. They simply accepted 
the assurance that the householder would give them 
"whatever is right" (Mt. 20:4, S, 7). They went to 
work on the conviction that their employer would deal 
fairly with them. The householder acted as men 
usually do in similar relations. When one makes a 
bargain with us for his services we keep the agreement; 
when he leaves it to our sense of justice and good 
feeling what we shall give him, we pay him more rather 
than less than the market value of his work. One 
salient teaching of the parable is that it is not well 
to make close bargains with God, but to trust Him 
for the reward. The service done in the spirit of 
trust will not be unrecognized. 

The attempt of the mother of James and John to 
gain special advantage for her children, probably at 
the instance of these disciples (Mt. 20:24, comp. Mk. 
10:35-37), elicited another great principle that con- 
trols the rewards of the kingdom. These friends and 
followers were able to serve and to surfer; they could 
drink of the Lord's cup and be baptized with His bap- 
tism (Mt. 20:22), but the supreme rewards, — sitting 
on the throne of the Master at His right hand and 
left, — these, said Jesus, are "not mine to give, but it 
is for them for whom it hath been prepared of my 
Father' ' (Mt. 20:23). The rewards of the kingdom 
are not under civil service rules to which God is 
subject, and on the basis of which men can exact 
their dues. That is not the organization of the 
kingdom. The will of God is supreme, and its 
action is not subject to the justifications of our 
standards. Indeed, the very consciousness of con- 
spicuous merit which raises us in our own esteem 
above others may give us a low place in the sight 
of God (Mt. 20:24-28). 

It is difficult to see how there could be a more com- 
plete and satisfactory answer to the question of the 



The Rewards of the Kingdom W) 

rewards of the kingdom. They are given to unselfish 
and devoted souls, they are always great, but greatest 
to those who, without making nice calculations or 
agreements, trust God for the issue, and they are in 
the hands of the heavenly Father (Mt. 20:23). 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The Serenity of the Master. 

Lu. 18:35—19:28; Jo. 11:55—12:11. 

Many men have been accounted heroes because un- 
der the sudden stress of a strong emotion they have 
shown themselves brave and self-sacrificing. Perhaps, 
however, these very persons would have been wholly 
unequal to a similar courage and devotion if the oc- 
casion which demanded those qualities had not been 
a swiftly passing moment, but had been prolonged for 
days and weeks that called for patience, fortitude and 
steadiness. One of the wonderful aspects of the life 





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sinjiiBij 












gL y^ / 


r:^^^^^ 


§r^ 

^^m 



From ** Glimpses of Bible Lands." 

Modern Jericho. 

of Jesus, is the serenity and poise with which He went 
up to His death at Jerusalem. He knew what was be- 
fore Him. Over and over again He told His friends 
that He was nearing the end. They could hardly see 
the cross even when they strained their eyes ; He saw 
it so clearly that any effort to keep it out of His 
thought must have been in vain. The incidents which 
Luke and John cite in connection with His coming to 
the city in company with the host of passover pil- 
grims set in salient relief our Lord's calm self-posses- 
sion, His perfect mastery of human hopes and fears. 

150 



The Serenity of the Master 151 

For example, it was on this journey, whether ap- 
proaching or leaving the city of Jericho does not mat- 
ter (Mk. 10:46; Lu. 18:35), that a blind man, curious 
at hearing the steps of the passing throng, was told 
that Jesus of Nazareth passed by. In some way or 
other this man must have learned of the Messianic 
claim of Jesus, for he cried out, using a Messianic 
title, " Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me!" 
We see in Jesus the same insight into character, the 
same sympathy, that always marked His miracles. 
Mark has told the story inimitably. Something of 
the mastery and peace that were in the soul of Jesus 
steals into our own souls as we read and ponder the 
familiar words. 

Again, it was on this journey that He met Zacchaeus. 
Nothing would have been more natural than for one 
under such a strain as that to which our Lord was 
subjected, to have been careless of the publican, who 
had been so anxious to see the Master that he had 
climbed a sycamore tree for a better view. Jesus, 
however, was alertly observant. He read the stranger 
like an open book, and invited Himself to the tax- 
gatherer's house. One wishes exceedingly that a 
report of the conversation between the Master and 
Zacchaeus, as they sat at meat, behind closed doors in 
the publican's house, had been preserved. It would 
have been an illustration of insight, tact and fidelity 
which the Christian world sorely needs. It is an 
undertaking worthy of any one's imaginative power, 
to seek to construct a conversation worthy of Jesus 
and true to the character of Zacchaeus. The very 
difficulty of such a task illuminates the wonder of the 
miracle to which those must hold who teach that the 
early church invented the gospels. We do not know 
what was said in Zacchaeus' house, but we know that 
the teaching and the personality of the Master trans- 
formed His host. The confession of Zacchaeus (Lu. 
19:8) is one of the best evidences of a thorough change 



152 The Great Ministry 

of heart recorded anywhere. This man's nature at 
least was not built in water-tight compartments. 
The new conviction and the new experience flooded 
his whole life, as the sunlight floods a room when the 
closed shutters are flung open. His business practices 
as well as his spiritual impulses w r ere transformed, 
or rather his spiritual impulses were so genuine and 
vital that they influenced the whole man. With the 
prospect of the cross immediately before Him, Jesus 
seems to have experienced for the moment something 
of the elasticity and joy of His early Galilean work. 
The supreme purpose of His mission stood sharply 
and freshly before His mind as He said, "The Son of 
man came to seek and to save that which was lost" 
(Lu. 19:10). 

The parable of the pounds illustrates the same tem- 
per in the attitude of our Lord at this critical period. 
It must be interpreted with reference to its purpose, 
namely, to disabuse His followers of the notion that 
the kingdom of God was to appear at once (Lu. 19: 
11). As men gradually increase their property by 
the processes of trading, the kingdom of God was to 
come slowly by the wise human use of divine gifts. 
The kingdom of God comes like a prudent business 
man's fortune; not at a stroke like a profit made in 
speculation, but gradually by the processes of legiti- 
mate business. The sagacious, large, discriminating 
outlook upon life this parable involves bears new tes- 
timony to the clarity and poise of the vision of Jesus. 

The supper at Bethany beautifully confirms the 
same impression. What a remarkable group was 
gathered about that board — the two sisters, so differ- 
ent and yet so admirable, whose faith and love had 
responded to supreme tests; Lazarus, who had come 
back from beyond the grave, and the group of the 
disciples, even Judas with the rest! The atmosphere 
of the scene is surcharged with emotion. Jesus sees 
what is before Him. The sisters are vaguely con- 



The Serenity of the Master 153 

scious of impending evil. The disciples half share 
their foreboding. And there is Lazarus, a witness 
to the Master's power over death. In that quiet home 
in Bethany there is every element that makes for a 
tense dramatic situation. There is fear and wonder, 
gratitude and love, and the consciousness of a power 
that is above human ken. It is one of those occasions 
in which no words are adequate. The act of Mary 
in breaking the box of costly ointment over the 
Master's feet is the only sufficient expression of the 
emotion of the hour. But there is nothing over- 
wrought or hysterical either in the scene or its de- 
scription. In Jesus' calm recognition of the prophetic 
quality of Mary's act (Jo. 12:7) we gain a penetrating 
glimpse into a matchless serenity, in the face of death 
slowly drawing nearer, which makes Jesus the ultimate 
exponent of the heroic. 

No picture has so lingered before the imagination 
of the race, and so inspired men to be brave and 
strong and true, as the representation of the last days 
of the life of Jesus. But we do not get the full im- 
pression of the heroism of Jesus when we think of 
Him before Caiaphas or before Pilate; we need also 
to think of Him as patient, sympathetic, unstartled, 
and undiverted from His mission during those days 
when He was going to Jerusalem to meet the cross. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The Secret of Jesus. 
Review of Chapters XXVII-XXXVIII. 

As we look in broad outline at the section of the 
life of Jesus embraced in the period of about eight 
months from the transfiguration to the supper at 
Bethany, several features of our Lord's ministry are 
thrown into sharp relief. 

One is His persistence in the purpose to bear the 
witness and to accomplish the work which the Father 
had appointed for Him. A general survey of this 
epoch makes it plain that not merely in isolated in- 
stances did He meet with discouragements that must 
have tempted Him sorely to change His aim or to re- 
lax His hold upon it, but that the intervals w^ere ex- 
ceedingly rare when, from a human point of view, 
He could have felt the least inspiration from circum- 
stances to remain true to His original purpose. We 
must not imagine that the temptations which beset our 
Lord's career were confined to the forty days' experi- 
ence in the wilderness after His baptism. In a deep 
sense His whole career must have been a temptation. 
There are plenty of instances in the gospels in w T hich 
a discerning reader detects the force of the solicitations 
that appeal to Jesus to choose a course of less abso- 
lute devotion to His ideals. By skilful compromises, 
by veiling His meaning more completely, by not insist- 
ing so unequivocally upon His claims, He might have 
saved His life, but there are no traces of such weak- 
nesses in Jesus. He stands forth as the type of 
heroic devotion to the highest purpose, and that by 
methods that are absolutely frank, outspoken and 
sincere. It is not strange that now for many centuries 
those who have been tempted to give over noble pur- 
poses have found in the brief story of the life of Je- 

154 



The Secret of Jesus 155 

sus, enshrined in our four gospels, a fountain of 
refreshment. Through the record, the Master has 
transferred to the souls of His followers something 
of that strength of will and that defiance of circum- 
stances which marked His own life here on the earth. 

Another characteristic of the life of Jesus that comes 
out prominently in this period is His undisturbed, un- 
ruffled graciousness. This is the period of some of the 
most sympathetic deeds of power, and of the most 
delicate and touching insights into character. It often 
happens that men who pursue their purposes with an 
energy and resolution that nothing thwarts are very 
gracious in their relations with those they love. The 
private letters of Prince Bismarck, recently published, 
show that "the iron chancellor" had a tender heart in 
his domestic circle. There is nothing at all uncommon 
in that combination of qualities, but what is un- 
usual is for one to display these qualities toward per- 
sons who are not one's friends. Bismarck's oppo- 
nents and enemies were one thing, his friends another, 
and to one group he manifested one side of his char- 
acter, to the other a different one. There is no hint 
of graciousness in the historic interview with Thiers, 
when the terms of peace with France were negotiated. 
The peculiar feature of the character of Jesus is that 
the steel-like hardness of His resolution did not take 
away His graciousness toward those against whom 
His resolution was directed. There is no trace of 
personal vindictiveness or rancor in His spirit. The 
lament over Jerusalem, which killed the prophets and 
was about to kill Him, has become a classic expression 
of affection, devotion and heart-breaking regret. It 
springs from the love that will not let its object go. 

But, after all, this persistence of purpose and this 
perennial graciousness are only manifestations of a 
characteristic of Jesus that lies far deeper than either 
of them, and that is His abiding confidence in God; 
that He was the Father's Son, that He was doing the 



156 The Great Ministry 

Father's will, that the Father would carry His cause 
to triumph. One of the profoundest of His self-dis- 
closures was His declaration that it was His meat 
to do the will of Him that sent Him. This is the sov- 
ereign clue that explains the human life of Jesus, and 
enables us to see how qualities that are not harmonized 
in most of us, in Him are united in perfect agreement. 
Indeed, this consciousness is the secret of every life 
that is rarely effective in the highest ways of human 
service. 

The letters of Martin Luther, which happily have 
been recently translated into English, give us a rare 
glimpse into the secret of his strength — into his loy- 
alty to his mission, which led him to resist all the 
blandishments of Leo X and of Charles V, and into 
his graciousness toward his opponents, which led him 
to send a message of comfort to the dying Tetzel. 
Luther had a controlling conviction that he was do- 
ing God's will. The consciousness that we are in 
God's hands, that we are carrying out His purposes, 
hardens the soft iron of our native resolution into 
steel, and, at the same time, it so lifts us above the 
petty resentments and rancors of unhappy human con- 
tacts that we can love our enemies, and do good to 
those who despitefully use us. 

No greater blessing can come to a human life, to 
make it at once strong and sweet, than the conviction, 
penetrating to its very center, that it is doing the 
Father's will. Then the little fragment of our human 
experience finds its adjustment to the cosmic plan of 
God, and something of the dignity and power and 
glory of the eternal sweeps into our souls. That was 
the secret of Jesus. 



CHAPTER XL. 

Going up to Jerusalem. 

Mt. 21:1-22; Lu. 19:39-43; Jo. 12:16-19. 

The determination of Jesus to attend the passover 
in Jerusalem in the year thirty of our era was a more 
critical point in the life of our Lord than a cursory 
reader of the gospels might at first suppose. It would 
have been entirely practicable for Him to have sought 
a hiding place from which He might reappear at some 
opportune moment. Indeed, He might have been 
quite safe in Perea, where His ministry was winning a 
success that recalled His early Galilean work. The 




The Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. 

Showing the temple area in the foreground and the roads over and around the Mount of 
Olives. 

disciples were keenly alive to the peril of His immedi- 
ate reappearance in Judea. When the news reached 
Him that Lazarus was sick they attempted to dissuade 
Him from coming so near Jerusalem as the suburb 
of Bethany (Jo. 11:7, 8). One of the lights which 
John throws upon the character of Thomas, called 
Didymus, is his report that, at this time of peril, 
Thomas said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go 
that we may die with him" (Jo. 11:16). 

The decision, therefore, of Jesus to attend this pass- 

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158 The Great Ministry 

over involved, as both He Himself and the disciples 
clearly saw, the whole tragedy which followed. If 
He had wished to save His life, this was the time. 
Either He should not have gone to Bethany at the 
call of the sisters, or, having restored Lazarus to life, 
He should have withdrawn quickly and secretly into 
Perea. From this point of view it will be seen at 
once that His giving up His life antedated the death on 
the cross, the interview with Pilate, and even the 
night of agony in the garden. If He had not gone to 
Jerusalem He might have escaped all these. If we 
are to commemorate the events of the gospel story 
with an approach to spiritual insight we shall not 
make Palm Sunday a feast of joy, for it is vitally 
associated with the supreme experience of Jesus. 

The Evangelists do not leave us in doubt as to the 
motive which led Jesus to take this dangerous step. 
They tell us directly and by implication that He went 
to Jerusalem to bear a complete witness to the truth 
that would satisfy His own nature. Up to this time 
His message had not been fully delivered. There 
were in it aspects of judgment as well as of tender- 
ness that had not been fully made known. The lead- 
ing spirits of the nation had turned against Him, but 
before they rejected Him finally they should be con- 
fronted with the whole truth. The reason that led 
Jesus to go to Jerusalem was not any hardy spirit of 
bravado; it was not any disposition to lay down His 
life without adequate cause; He was driven — the 
word is not too strong — to go to Jerusalem by a su- 
preme ethical demand. He must speak His whole 
message; He must be true to His mission. The rea- . 
son that led Jesus to go to Jerusalem was the reason 
that leads a soldier to obey a command to go where 
he is sent, to hold the post to which he is assigned, 
to do the duty to which he is ordered. 

There are some representations of the life of Jesus 
that make Him simply a creature of circumstances, 



Going up to Jerusalem 159 

caught in the whirling mechanism of Jewish-Roman 
politics. That is far from the truth. His death was 
not inevitable. He might have escaped it, but He 
could not escape it and be true to His mission. And 
that is why men in every age who have had to weigh 
the comfort of their bodies against the peace of their 
souls, their inclination against their mission, their life 
against fidelity to duty, have found such inspiration 
and impulse to the noble course in the career of Jesus. 
He does not merely point out the way, but He leads 
in it. The closing chapter of Cardinal Newman's 
Callista is simply a portraiture of the way loyal souls 
have met the gravest sacrifices and death itself under 
the inspiration of Jesus Christ. 

Our Lord's actual entrance to the city was not only 
overshadowed by the knowledge that He was going to 
His death, but also by His pity for the multitude and 
His forecast of the approaching doom of the beauti- 
ful and sacred city. The sound of the hosannas of 
the multitude awakened no self-gratulation in His 
bosom. Luke tells us what He felt while they were 
flinging palm branches in His w r ay, and the air was 
vocal with the song, " Blessed is he that corneth in 
the name of the Lord." "And when he drew nigh, 
he saw the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst 
known in this day, even thou, the things which belong 
unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes" 
(Lu. 19:41,42). And then Luke goes on to tell us 
how there swept before His eyes a vision of the Roman 
siege. He saw from afar the gathering of the ar- 
mies of Titus, the cloud of arrows under which the 
battering-rams assailed the fair walls, the destruction 
of the temple, the fire, the rapine and the outrage — 
the memorial of which still meets our eyes in the arch 
of Titus at Rome. Twice our Lord is said to have 
wept, once at the tomb of Lazarus — the Greek word 
used to describe His act there signifies suppressed and 
silent weeping — and again on this occasion — the word 



160 The Great Ministry 

used here signifies audible weeping, the convulsive 
sobbing of unsubdued emotion. That was the way 
Jesus felt on that bright April day when He rode in- 
to the city accompanied by the applause of the multi- 
tude. 

The driving of the traders from the temple (Mt. 
21:12, 13), and the parable in action of the barren fig 
tree (Mt. 21:18-22), represent the beginning of the 
witness for which He came to the city. As w^e study 
in detail the events of the passover week we shall 
see in these incidents simply the prelude of that call 
to purity and usefulness which constitute the heart of 
the message of Jesus. He believed that those who 
were loyal to this message would also be loyal to Him, 
its witness and exponent. He who loved the light 
would recognize the light of the world (Jo. 1:19-21; 
9:5). The condemnation of the Jewish nation was 
not so much, in the first instance, that they did not ac- 
cept Jesus as the Messiah, but that they were disloyal 
to the light they confessedly had, and that disloyalty 
blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts to Him. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

The Nature of Sin. 

Mt. 21:23— 22:14. 

The festal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and His bold 
act of driving the traffickers in the temple from its 
sacred precincts, were a challenge which the Hebrew 
authorities were not disposed to ignore. Accord- 
ingly, to bring matters to an issue, they sent a deputa- 
tion to Jesus raising the vital question of His au- 
thority: "By what authority doest thou these things? 
and who gave thee this authority" (Mt. 21:23)? The 
question itself was a legitimate one, and our Lord's 
reply was not a shrewd trap to involve His questioners 
in a dilemma, but His counter question, "The bap- 
tism of John, whence was it? from heaven or from 
men?" (Mt. 21:25) was a genuine and serious reply 
to their query. The true answer to the question of 
Jesus was the one that the multitudes had given, and 
the one that the leaders of the Jews would have given 
had not their selfish passions and interests prohibited. 
The baptism of John was from heaven. How did 
they know that it w r as from heaven? They did not 
know it because John had external, official credentials 
of any sort, but they knew it because his teaching 
awakened a deep and vital response in their hearts. 
His message was self-evidencing. It fitted the needs 
of the souls that God had made, and the conclusion 
was irresistible that it came from God. The counter 
question of Jesus then is not an evasion of the close 
inquiry that "the chief priests and elders of the 
people" pressed upon Him. They might find it per- 
plexing, but that would only be because they did not 
want to meet it by an honest reply. The clear, unmis- 
takable implication of the question was that the 
authority of Jesus was like the authority of John. It 

161 



162 



The Great Ministry 



did not depend on badges, seals or documents; it did 
not require any external credential whatever; it was 

immediate and self- 

• evidencing. Those 
who saw and heard 
Him did not need 
any certification of 
Jerusalem officials 
that He came from 
God; His personal- 
ity and message 
were their own au- 
thentications. 

This question of 
the officials has a 
strangely modern 

Sub Stan- 




Bridge over the Brook Kidron. 

Showing Absalom's tomb on the right. This brook is dry SOUnQ 
in summer, but full in winter. Jesus crossed it many j_* ii x _ -j. 1C +u~ ni1c 
times during the last week of His life. tidily It lb tllC queb- 

tion that thought- 
ful minds are asking to-day in all our churches and 
colleges and seminaries, What is the authority of 
Jesus ? What are His credentials to be the supreme 
guide of human life? It is not possible to improve 
upon the answer that Jesus Himself gave. His au- 
thority ultimately rests upon the self-evidencing 
quality of His personality and of His revelation. In 
Him God speaks to the heart He has made. The soul 
which hears that voice finds that there arises within 
itself a compelling conviction as to Jesus, which be- 
comes the source of certainties that are not produced 
by inferences from external data (Jo. 4:14). In the 
great words of John, the believer has the witness in 
himself (1 Jo. 5:10). 

The main point, then, of our Lord's condemnation 
of the chief priests and elders of the people was that 
they had not been loyal to the light they had. Their 
rejection of Him was simply the outcome of a long 
course of violence to moral convictions. At bottom 



The X at ure of Sin 163 

there is no inherent difference between the rejection 
of Christ, and disloyalty to any moral conviction, for 
the claims of Christ report themselves in the inner life 
as a moral conviction. If they do not, He is not truly 
accepted or rejected. 

In three parables, spoken in the Court of the Gen- 
tiles, Jesus drives home to the consciences of His 
hearers this infidelity of the leaders and of the nation 
to moral conviction. In the parable of the two sons 
(Mt. 21:28-31) He sharply contrasts saying and do- 
ing. Judaism had been prolific in professions, but 
it had rested there. In actual obedience to God, 
loyalty to the truth, it had been wanting. The son 
who professes much and does nothing lacks the filial 
disposition. 

But the condemnation of Israel was not simply that 
it had not done what it professed, but that it had 
been false to a great trust. In the parable of the 
vineyard and the husbandmen (Mt. 21:33-43) this is 
put in the clearest light. The husbandmen held the 
property as a trust, and in diverting it to their own 
purposes they not only did wrong, but they wronged 
others. That is something that we all are apt to 
forget. We think that faithlessness to our convic- 
tions of righteousness injures only ourselves; we for- 
get that such disloyalty, influencing as it does the use 
of our time, our endowments, our privileges, our 
opportunities, our property, affects others, for we 
hold all these things not as owners of their fee, but 
as trustees for God and for our fellow men. The con- 
demnation which the story led our Lord's hearers to 
pronounce upon the husbandmen was the spontaneous 
verdict of their own moral natures upon the course 
of Israel. 

But in this faithlessness of Israel to the light it had, 
the nation had not only wronged itself and others, but 
it had despised God. That is the point of the parable 
of the marriage feast. Even among us to-day one 



164 The Great Ministry 

can hardly commit a more serious affront than to 
take no notice of an invitation to a wedding. The 
wedding is the great epoch in the lives of those con- 
cerned. By paying no attention to the invitation to 
attend it, you say in the most pointed way that you 
have no interest or sympathy as to a matter which so 
vitally concerns your friends. There is only one 
greater offense, and that is, having accepted the invi- 
tation, to show by your manner, bearing and garb 
that you are indifferent to the proprieties of the 
occasion. That is the significance of the condemna- 
tion of the guest without "a wedding garment." 
The insult was as great to the host as if one should go 
to a wedding in a golf suit or a shooting jacket. Such 
a garb would be conclusive evidence that the one who 
wore it despised the host and was utterly out of sym- 
pathy with the occasion. That, said Jesus, is the 
way Israel has treated God. She has not only 
wronged herself by her unfilial conduct, she has 
wronged others; and done despite to the Most High. 
It will be difficult upon the utmost reflection to sug- 
gest a keener analysis of the nature of sin than Jesus 
gave the Jews that day in the temple court, and it is 
as modern as our morning newspaper. The root of 
sin is disloyalty to the moral conviction which arises 
in the soul when it sees the truth. In that disloyalty 
the soul wrongs itself, does injustice to others, and 
contemns God. The disloyalty of Judaism to its 
moral conviction as to Jesus, was not an isolated act, 
it was the sequence and the outcome of the past. 




CHAPTER XLII. 

The Witness of Jesus. 

Mt. 22:15—23:39. 

Our Lord's analysis of the sins of the representa- 
tives of Judaism led to a coalition of the three Hebrew 
parties which were naturally and historically antago- 
nistic one to another. These were the Herodians, 
who had accepted the Roman domination as an ac- 
complished fact, and were regarded by those who as- 
pired to Jewish independence as renegades ; the Phari- 
sees, who represented traditional orthodoxy; and the 
Sadducees, who appear to 
have been the rationalist and 
skeptical party in the Jewish 
church, and who had suc- 
ceeded in holding the chief 
official places in the organ- 
ized religious life of the na- 
tion. The fact that these 
warring interests should 
have been drawn together in opposition to Jesus 
reveals the extent of His popular following, or the 
stirrings of conscience His words had occasioned. 
Probably both factors entered into the situation. 
The leaders of all these parties saw that the people 
were becoming profoundly moved, and they also felt 
poignant convictions as to the truth of His words. 
All parties, therefore, were under strong motives to 
entangle Him in some situation which would afford 
a colorable pretext for getting Him out of the way. 

The easiest method of doing this was to induce Him 
to say something which might be construed as treason- 
able to Rome. Then the Roman power might step in 
and dispose of Him. This course would have the con- 
siderable advantage of preventing the Roman authori- 

165 



Coin of Tiberius. 

The Caesar at the time of this lesson. 



166 The Great Ministry 

ties from regarding the popular uprising in favor of 
Jesus as abetted by the leaders of the Jews in opposi- 
tion to Rome, for they would be enabled to appear as 
complainants against Jesus. The sedition would be 
His, not theirs, and they would appear as the support- 
ers of Roman authority against a treasonable fanatic. 
This line of reasoning so commended itself to them, 
that, after their attempt to involve Jesus in treason- 
able utterances had failed, they asserted that it had 
succeeded, in order to get the advantage that such a 
charge might give them in the eyes of Roman officials 
(Lu. 23:2). 

The first attack was adroitly planned (Mt. 22:17- 
22). It seemed impossible to answer the question, "Is 
it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?" without 
falling into the trap. If He said "Yes, " He was open 
to the charge of being disloyal to Judaism, and, if 
He said "No," He was equally open to the charge 
of being disloyal to Rome. The device of asking for 
a coin and commenting upon the superscription, not 
only afforded a happy escape from the dilemma, but 
it presented an opportunity for the enunciation of a 
most important truth. The spheres of earthly and 
of divine authority, while closely related, are not 
necessarily antagonistic. It is quite possible to be 
loyal to God and at the same time to be loyal to the 
earthly ruler. One of the invaluable contributions 
which the experiment of free institutions in the United 
States is making to the political thought of the world 
is that we are demonstrating the practicability of the 
ideal of Jesus that men should be at the same time 
loyal to two sovereignties, rendering unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are 
God's. 

The second assault (Mt. 22:23-33) shifted the at- 
tack from the political realm to the theological. It 
was conducted by the Sadducees. Whatever His an- 
swer to the query as to whom the woman should be- 



The Witness oj Jesus 167 

long in the resurrection when she had been the wife 
of seven brothers on the earth, it could hardly serve 
as the basis of a serious charge. Perhaps we are not 
wrong in seeing in this question an attempt to put 
Jesus, as a teacher, in an absurd position, or perhaps 
to strike at the Pharisees over Him. The whole diffi- 
culty in the question lay in the false conception of the 
future life as the continuation of the conditions of the 
present physical life (1 Cor. ch. IS; Lu. 20:34-36). 
But Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to show 
that the Old Testament taught the immortality which 
the Sadducees denied, and hence that their doctrine 
was unfaithful to the teaching of their own Scriptures 
which they professed to follow. 

The third question (Mt. 22:34-40) reveals a break- 
ing-down of the attempt to put Jesus, verbally at 
least, in the wrong, so as to secure the basis of a 
charge against Him. The point in the mind of the 
scribe evidently was the relative importance of cere- 
monial and moral duties. The answer of Jesus is 
practically a quotation from the Old Testament (Deut. 
6:5; Lev. 19:18). The reply was so complete and 
conclusive that the Pharisees, whom the scribe rep- 
resented, like the Herodians and the Sadducees, were 
silenced. 

At this point Jesus Himself put a question to the 
Pharisees, who may have remained after the other 
groups had dispersed (Mt. 22:41-45). The purpose 
of this question was to show that the promised Mes- 
siah was not, as they taught, a political ruler. David 
had evidently made the Messiah greater than a son, 
he had made Him his Lord (Ps. 110:1). The Messiah 
therefore must be something far more than a Jewish 
sovereign to restore the glories of the reign of David. 
The suggestion of Jesus carries our thought to the 
spirituality and universality of the dominion of Christ. 
The Pharisees did not know how to answer Jesus. He 



168 The Great Ministry 

had silenced their cavils. Now they were silent be- 
fore His question. 

Jesus seems to have felt that the time for exposition, 
or for an attempt to reach a mutual understanding, 
had passed. The fact was that they understood Him 
and He understood them. The issue had been drawn. 
They would not accept Him or His teachings, and He 
could not compromise with them. There is only one 
course for a true man at such a time — to utter his 
whole mind, to give his whole message. That is what 
Jesus came to Jerusalem to do. That is what He now 
did. Perhaps this discourse (Mt. ch. 23) is unex- 
ampled in searching, biting invective. The secrets of 
hearts are laid bare, the gross inconsistencies between 
knowledge and performance, between professions and 
practice, are unveiled, and righteous passion reaches a 
tremendous climax in the curse of Jesus (Mt. 23:29- 
36). And yet we are not to imagine these words as 
spoken in a frenzy of anger. Perhaps we cannot 
imagine at all how they were spoken, for the awful 
curse is followed by a passage in which His heart 
melts over Jerusalem, the city of His love (Mt. 23: 
37, 38). What we are sure of is that behind all these 
words was the heart of the Jesus whom we have been 
studying. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

The Temper of Jesus after His Witness against 
Jerusalem. 

Mk. 12:41-44; Jo. 12:20-59. 

Jesus had borne His full witness against the leaders 
of the nation ; and those who had been especially exas- 
perated by His calls to righteousness and faith had 
retired to plot His destruction. But, as Jesus tarried 
in the temple court, the scene of His crowning fidelity 
to His mission, two incidents took place which throw 
into bold relief His attitude of mind at this epoch 
when He was certain that the schemes against His life 
were about to come to fruition. The first illustrates 
His moral poise at a time when He was naturally 
tremulous with the excitement and reaction of the 
tremendous conflict through which He had just 
passed; the second illustrates his fidelity to His 
mission against a temptation quite as insidious as 
the solicitation to cowardice that might have led Him 
to remain in Perea. 

As He stood in the court near the funnel shaped 
boxes into which the passover pilgrims were casting 
their offerings, He noted the self-satisfied, ostenta- 
tious manner of the rich as they made their contribu- 
tions, and then His attention was arrested by the ap- 
proach of a widow who shyly cast in two mites. She 
little dreamed that that unobtrusive gift was to be 
memorable throughout the ages. Like the anointing 
of His feet by another woman her act would be known 
as far as His Gospel w r as preached. Her deed was en- 
dowed with immortality because He saw it and spoke 
of it. The comment of Jesus was that this woman had 
made a larger gift than all her rich predecessors, and 
the reason was that they had given of their abundance 
while she had cast in all her living. In other words 

169 



170 The Great Ministry 

it is not what one gives that measures the greatness of 
the gift, but what one has left after the giving. 

The clear apprehension of this truth would change 
many of our current estimates of generosity, and it 
would deliver many rich men from the delusion that 
they are doing some great thing when they fling from 
their abundance to some good work. The great Chris- 
tian causes, church support, evangelization, missions, 
need large sums of money to-day, and they are not 
forthcoming. A principal reason is that Christians, 
for the most part, have not yet apprehended the mean- 
ing of our Lord's saying on this occasion. The rich 
man thinks that he is doing his full duty when he 
gives twice or five or ten times as much as his neigh- 
bor, and especially if he gives as much as all the mem- 
bers of the local congregation put together give. But 
what one's neighbor or a group of one's neighbors give 
has nothing whatever to do with one's own duty. 
What the rich man should give depends on his devo- 
tion to the cause which needs his gifts and on his re- 
sources. 

We might expect to find that Jesus uttered a dec- 
laration like this in the untroubled days of His early 
ministry. That He should have said this at the very 
time when His spirit must have been profoundly dis- 
turbed shows both His mental balance in a moment 
of supreme stress, and the importance He placed upon 
the loving and generous use of one's resources. 

The other incident involved an insidious temptation. 
Some Greeks who had embraced Judaism sought Philip 
—probably because of his Greek name — and asked 
an introduction to Jesus. After consultation with 
Andrew, Philip led them to the Master. We are 
ignorant as to the interview itself. We only know 
what its effect was upon Jesus. In the eager, respon- 
sive faces of these honest men our Lord saw a first 
sheaf of the harvest of the Gentile world. The thought 
seems to have occurred to Him, for the moment, that, 



The Temper of Jesus 171 

though His own people had rejected Him, and, at this 
very time, their authorities were seeking His life, 
might He not find among the Gentiles a recognition 
that He had not found in Israel? might it not be possi- 
ble for Him to win men back to God, in great numbers, 
without submitting Himself to the fury of the Jewish 
leaders, and without undergoing a shameful death? 
might not the very prophecy upon which He had fed 
His spirit point to some issue like this without the 
agony of the cross (Is. 60:1, 3)? 

Suggestions like these appear to have been in the 
mind of Jesus. We have already pointed out that it 
is an error to regard the temptations of Jesus as 
limited to His experiences in the wilderness immedi- 
ately after His baptism. These solicitations were 
only preliminary and preparative. The temptation 
to gain kingship by some easier way than the cross 
(Mt. 4:8-10) had appeared again before the transfig- 
uration (Mt. 16:22, 23), and it reappears now in a 
much more subtile and insidious form. The sugges- 
tion now is that Jesus can gain His end and fulfil His 
mission worthily by purely moral and spiritual means 
and yet escape the cross. There was a plausibility 
in this last suggestion which concealed temptation 
that only a keen spiritual insight could detect. It 
would be manifestly wrong to gain the spiritual king- 
ship that Jesus sought by worshiping Satan. The 
very ideas are incongruous, but to gain that kingship 
by preaching the truth to the Gentile world, by doing 
outside the borders of Israel what He had been doing 
for the whole term of his ministry within the limits 
of Israel, why is not this the reasonable, the true, the 
noble path? Did the thought of Jesus linger for a 
moment over the alternative? Was the vista of 
escape which the coming of the Greeks suggested 
alluring? Is that the meaning of the prayer so diffi- 
cult to interpret, that He might be saved from this 
hour, coupled with the recognition that "this hour," 



172 The Great Ministry 

this supreme temptation, contains in itself the heart 
of His mission? 

The fidelity of Jesus to His own earlier insights is 
absolute and complete. He sees that the way the 
coming of the Greeks has, for a moment, suggested is 
no true path. What He said to Peter after his great 
confession is still true, that "he must go unto Jerusa- 
lem and suffer many things of the elders and chief 
priest and scribes, and be killed," because only through 
His death could His life be made fruitful, as the seed 
must die to live again in the waving harvests of the 
autumn (Jo. 12:24, 32). 

Perhaps no theology has yet penetrated to the full 
import of that "must." After all our speculations 
and skilful analogies there is an elusive element in 
the fact of the necessity of the Redeemer's death on 
the cross. But, if our interpretation of the inner 
experience of Jesus, when He met these Greeks, is 
true, our Lord had clearly before Him the opportunity 
of escaping the cross and of seeking to establish His 
kingdom by proclamation of the truth. He put the 
suggestion aside as a temptation. If this was so, the 
death of Jesus is an essential element of the Christi- 
anity of Jesus. He believed that His triumph de- 
pended on the cross. 

These incidents give us a fresh and strong impres- 
sion of the personality and temper of Jesus as He 
went forth to meet His death. He was no baffled, 
hysterical fanatic. At the close of the conflict with 
the Pharisees and chief priests He retained all the 
delicacy and strength of His matchless insight. He 
saw in the contrast between the rich men and the 
poor widow an ethical principle of universal and com- 
manding import, and He discriminated between the 
false path and the true for the fulfilment of His mis- 
sion. Above them all, at this period of weariness and 
excitement He made the great renunciation of His 
whole career, and chose the cross. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 
The Second Coming of Christ. 

Mt. chs. 24, 25; 26:1-5, 14-16. 

Tuesday of the week before the crucifixion stands 
forth as memorable in all the days of the life of our 
Lord. On that day He had uttered His final witness 
against the rulers of the nation; on that day He had 
laid down the law of beneficence; on that day His 
interview with the Greeks had suggested the most 
insidious temptation that had beset His path, and 
now towards the close of this momentous day He 
gave His disciples the great announcement of the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and of His own second 
coming. 

This prophetic 
discourse was occa- 
sioned by the view 
of the city from the 
Mount of Olives. 
Late in the after- 
noon He' went out 
of Jerusalem, taking 
the road to Beth- 
any, which ran 
directly over the 
Mount of Olives. 
Tarrying for a mo- 
ment on the summit, the disciples were impressed 
with the superb beauty of that white city in the 
light of the setting sun. The question which rose 
to their lips was not only natural, it was in- 
evitable. They recalled the tremendous prophecy 
of destruction which that very day Jesus had uttered 
in the temple court. There before them rose the tem- 
ple, towering above the esplanade formed by the 

173 




From a photograph. 

The Summit of the Mount of Olives. 



174 The Great Ministry 

mighty and beautiful walls that formed the southeast 
bastion of the city. The city itself seemed impreg- 
nable, and so lovely that an inspired New Testament 
writer could find no more adequate symbol of heaven 
itself than to call it "the new Jerusalem, adorned as a 
bride for her husband." What, said the disciples, 
casting their gaze across the valley, what is to become 
of this strong and beautiful temple ? The answer was 
one to bring dismay to the heart of every devout and 
patriotic Hebrew. The reply of Jesus was: " There 
shall not be left here one stone upon another that 
shall not be thrown down." 

This tragic answer immediately elicited another 
question as to when these things should be. The re- 
ply of Jesus embraces what are known as the apoca- 
lyptic discourses, and they have been interpreted in 
many ways. Even sects have been founded on special 
interpretations of these passages. Without going into 
details, the discussion of which would require many 
chapters, several features of our Lord's reply are clear. 

For example, it seems to be plain that Jesus gave 
the impression that He would come to the earth again. 
No one who has the slightest familiarity with the his- 
tory of the Apostolic and early church can doubt that 
the belief in the second coming of Jesus held a very 
large place in the life and thought of the first Chris- 
tians. Indeed, as we see in the first letter of Paul to 
the Thessalonians, this doctrine had been so pushed 
out of its perspective that the outlook of many devout 
souls upon the Christian life had become perilously 
distorted. It is almost impossible to account for such 
a state of affairs without tracing the doctrine back to 
the words of Jesus. And a careful examination of 
these discourses will give the unprejudiced student 
sufficient reason for believing that the early church did 
not misunderstand the Master. Actually there is no 
objection to the doctrine of the second coming of 
Christ that is not equally valid against all belief in the 



The Second Coming of Christ 175 

miraculous. And at the bottom of the question in 
regard to the miraculous is not, Is this or that event 
contrary to human experience? but, Is it contrary to 
the plan of God ? Human experience only affords par- 
tial evidence as to the plan of God. The word of the 
prophets and the intuitions of the spirit are also to be 
taken into account. 

At the same time these discourses appear to teach 
that the coming of the Son of man is a process. A 
phase of it is to be realized in the destruction of 
Jerusalem by the army of Titus, hardly a generation 
distant, but the fact that the coming is a process does 
not prevent it from being an event also. The teach- 
ing of Jesus appears to be that His coming is a world 
process culminating in an event — His personal return 
to the earth. In the highly figurative language of 
these discourses these two conceptions are mingled. 
It is not always easy to separate them, but the general 
impression is not at all doubtful. The second coming 
is both a process and an event. Christ came in the 
destruction of Jerusalem, He came in the fall of 
Constantinople in 1453, He came in the recent 
Russo-Japanese war. Christ is in the world; all its 
changes are in His hands; the government is upon 
His shoulders; ultimately we shall see that the his- 
tory of the world is, as Jonathan Edwards said, the 
history of redemption. In this sense Christ is com- 
ing all the time in the world process, but this process 
is moving toward an issue and a climax, and that is 
the personal return of the Lord Himself. 

But it should be noticed that there is no hint as to 
the time of His coming as an event. Indeed, Jesus 
expressly declared that this was one of the things 
that He did not know (Mk. 13:32). It is one of the 
strangest features of Christian history that multitudes 
of men who accept as authoritative the Scriptures, 
which contain this statement, should spend themselves 



176 The Great Ministry 

in seeking to ascertain from the Scriptures that which 
they declare that Jesus Himself did not know. 

Our Lord did not answer the question as to the 
time these things should be. He adopted the course 
He took after the resurrection when the disciples 
inquired as to the restoration of the kingdom of Israel 
(Acts 1:6-8). He called their thought away from the 
seasons and chronologies to urgent present duty. The 
prudent virgins make provision for the bridegroom's 
coming at any moment. It is not in their power to 
forecast the hour, but it is in their power to be 
prepared for His coming at any hour (Mt. 24:45-51; 
25:1-13). And this preparation is not a noisy, bus- 
tling, nervous activity, and still less a round of pro- 
fessional or ceremonial observance; it consists in 
fidelity to trusts (Mt. 25:14-30), and in unostentatious 
helpfulness to one's fellow men (Mt. 2 5:3 1-46). The 
Master, who has just declared that He will be present 
in the world in the terrific conflict that is to end in 
the destruction of Jerusalem, now declares that He 
will be present in the world in the events of ordinary 
life so that the man who ministers to a human being 
ministers to Him. 

Already, as this momentous day closes, the toils of 
His enemies close about Jesus. One of His own dis- 
ciples becomes the ready tool of the rulers' intrigues. 
Perhaps before Jesus reached Bethany that evening, 
Judas had made his first approaches to the priests. 
He may have slipped away from the little group, 
lingering on the summit of the Mount of Olives, while 
Jesus was speaking the words we have been studying. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

The Last Supper. 

Mk. 14:22-26; Lu. 22:7-30; Jo. 13:1-30. 

Probably our Lord spent Wednesday and Thursday 
morning of the last week of His life at the home of 
Martha, Mary and Lazarus in Bethany. Thursday 
afternoon He sent Peter and John into the city to 
make ready the passover meal, which He wished to 
share with His disciples (Lu. 22:8-13). 

By this time Jesus must have passed through that 
bitter agony of spirit which is always involved in 
making a decision that involves one's hold upon life. 
That decision had been irrevocably made on the 
momentous Tuesday when, by His scathing denunci- 
ation of the chief men in Jerusalem, He had closed the 
door against any possible reconciliation. The quiet 
and opportunity for reflection He enjoyed on Wednes- 
day probably did much to calm His spirit, and on 
Thursday afternoon He returned to the city fully pre- 
pared to meet the issue which He had never attempted 
to evade. He knew that it was most unlikely that 
He would ever again see Bethany, or make one of the 
household group which was bound to Him by so 
many ties. 

During these days the disciples must have been al- 
most dazed. They realized that some calamity was 
impending; they did not know exactly what. Per- 
haps they felt that Jesus had gone entirely too far in 
denouncing the leading men of His time, and that 
it would have been far better to adopt a more concil- 
iatory tone. And yet their faith in Jesus was not 
broken. The dispute which arose before the supper 
as to which of them should be greatest was not a dis- 
cussion that could have taken place among a group 
of men who believed that they had committed them- 

177 



178 The Great Ministry 

selves to a losing cause. The language of Jesus, as 
reported by Luke, was admirably adapted to en- 
courage this hopeful mood (Lu. 22:24-30). Jesus did 
not say that their ideas of the kingdom He was to 
establish were correct, but He did say that there was 
to be a kingdom. Let us never forget that the su- 
perb promise, "I appoint unto you a kingdom, . . . 
and ye shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes 
of Israel'' (Lu. 22:29, 30), was spoken at this supper. 

It is one of the bitter ironies of Christian history 
that the farewell supper of Jesus with His friends, 
the memory of which suggests beautiful fellowship 
and divine love, should have been the occasion and 
subject of the most acrimonious, uncharitable discus- 
sions, and of vindictive persecutions. To realize the 
truth of this we have only to recall that for cen- 
turies transubstantiation — the doctrine that, by the 
agency of the priest in celebrating the mass, the wafer 
and the wine are miraculously transmuted into the 
veritable body and blood of Christ — has been the 
very apple of the eye of the Roman system. We have 
only to recall that Luther at the Marburg conference 
threw away the fairest opportunity for a real union of 
the great reform movements of the sixteenth century 
by insisting against Zwingli that the word "is," in 
the sentence, "This is my body," must be taken 
literally. The very memorial that Jesus intended 
should propagate love and unselfish devotion has been 
a battle ground, associated with all the atrocities of 
war. 

It is possible to read into the narrative many inter- 
pretations, but three aspects of the Lord's supper are 
too clear to admit of debate. One is that our Lord 
associated this supper with the Jewish passover. The 
supper carries over into Christianity the spirit and 
interior significance of the great Hebrew observance. 
In a certain sense it is legitimate to interpret the 
latter ceremonial through the earlier, but we must 



Tlie Last Supper 179 

always be on our guard that we have penetrated to 
the real genius of the earlier observance, and are not 
misled by fanciful and superficial analogies. Jesus 
appears to have thought of Himself as prefigured in 
the paschal lamb. Just as there was protection for 
the Hebrew household, at the time of the original 
possover, in the blood of the lamb, His own death 
would bring vast benefit to His followers; and just 
as the eating of the passover represented a covenant 
relation between the participant and God, so the 
observance of the supper typified a new covenant 
relation between God and the friends of Christ. 

But more than this, these narratives describing the 
institution of the supper show conclusively the central 
place that, in the thought of Jesus, His own death 
was to have in establishing His kingdom. His body 
is to be broken; His blood is to be poured out. Paul, 
in his report of the original supper, declares that the 
purpose for which it is to be observed is that be- 
lievers may "proclaim the Lord's death till he come" 
(1 Cor. 11:26). If our interpretation of the interview 
of Jesus with the Greeks is justified (Chapter XLIII), 
and at that time He resisted the suggestion that 
His own death might not be essential to the accom- 
plishment of His mission, it was entirely natural that 
He should make the great element in His ministry to 
mankind the principal message of the observance 
which He wished to commemorate his career. In 
the religion of Jesus, the relationship between His 
death and His triumph is so close and vital that the 
latter is not possible without the former. It is a true 
spiritual insight into the genius of Christianity which 
has made the cross its symbol. 

And then, too, we can hardly fail to see how prom- 
inent the commemorative element is in the supper. 
Modern Christians owe a great debt to Huldreich 
Zwingli for impressing this aspect of the supper upon 
the thought of men. The way Jesus wished to be 



180 The Great Ministry 

remembered was that His friends should gather about 
a table, and take a morsel of bread and a sip of wine 
in His memory. How simple and how beautiful it is! 
And all through the ages, in the great cathedrals of 
sumptuous cities, in village churches, in the caves of 
the Waldensian mountains, on the seas, in the forests 
and deserts, faithful men and women have shared 
the bread and wine and thought of the Master. The 
scene in the upper room in Jerusalem has been re- 
enacted in their experience, and their hearts have 
glowed with new devotion to their Redeemer and Lord. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

The Farewell Message. 

Jo. 13:31—17:26. 

If the gospel narrative is substantially the weaving, 
around a slender nucleus of fact, of the devout fancies 
which the disciples of our Lord came to entertain con- 
cerning Him, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine how 
they succeeded in maintaining the spiritual teachings 
of Jesus upon the high level on which they are pro- 
jected. The requisite 
amount of pains in com- 
piling documents would 
secure historical and 
chronological accuracy, 
though these are mat- 
ters as to which the 
Evangelists have been 
least careful. But to 
make the spiritual out- 
looks and insights of 
Jesus congruous with 
themselves was an un- 
dertaking of superhu- 
man difficulty. Many 
gifted men and women 
have striven to write 
imaginative sketches of the life of Jesus, upon the 
basis of the data given in the four gospels, but 
whenever they represent Jesus as saying something 
beyond what is recorded of Him, it is plain at once 
that the wings of their imagination are unequal to 
such an upward flight. 

Those who would explain the gospels upon such 
a theory meet one of the important difficulties in their 
task, when they would make clear to us how any dis- 

181 




The Traditional "Upper Chamber. 



182 The Great Ministry 

ciple, even John himself, could have fabricated the 
farewell discourse at the supper, and the intercessory 
prayer. The conclusion is as nearly irresistible as an 
argument that is not technically demonstrable can be, 
that they did not imagine but reported. 

One or two general considerations are impressed 
upon every thoughtful reader of these chapters. One 
is that Jesus, in view of the near approach of death — - 
He was confident that He had only a few hours to 
live — absolutely preserves His self-poise, His confi- 
dence in the triumph of His cause and in His unsullied, 
uninterrupted relationship with the Father. There 
is nothing foreboding or panic-stricken in a syllable 
that fell from His lips. And His peace is not that of 
the stoic who takes whatever may come with an equal 
mind, because he feels that he has done all he can. 
His peace was not even the strange, almost unearthly 
calm that ruled four centuries before in the rock- 
hewn cell in Athens, where Socrates spent the last 
hours of his life with his friends. We are aware, as 
we read the luminous and touching pages of the 
Phcedo, that that wise and cheerful spirit could see 
nothing distinctly beyond the cup of hemlock. That 
is not what we feel as we read these chapters of John's 
gospel. Jesus sees the cross upon which in a few 
hours He is to hang, but He sees clearly far beyond it. 
He sees the "many mansions," and the Father's 
house; He sees the coming of the Spirit, and the 
victory of the kingdom: He sees the reunion of the 
faithful when He and they together shall drink the 
new wine of the final triumph. There is gloom at the 
farewell supper in the upper room in Jerusalem, but 
it is the sorrow of the present parting; not the sor- 
row that comes from the forecast of ultimate defeat 
and failure. Perhaps this personal attitude of Jesus 
toward the apparent overthrow of His work and the 
death of the cross has done as much as any one thing 
recorded in the gospels to inspire intelligent faith 



The Farewell Message 183 

in Him. Whatever the weight we attach to miracles, 
it is evidence that belongs in the court of the Gentiles 
when we compare it with the evidence from the per- 
sonal outlook of Jesus upon the cross and the future 
of His kingdom and His relationship to the Father. 
We feel that He knew the issues of life and death; 
that the key of destiny was in His hands; that He 
had the secret of the cosmos. 

Hardly less impressive is our Lord's attitude toward 
His disciples at this critical hour. The farewell dis- 
course and prayer palpitate with personal affection. 
Jesus Himself was something more than Master and 
Teacher, He w r as the dearest personal friend. At this 
hour His own heart seems to have responded more 
deeply than ever before, perhaps, to the warm human 
devotion of these men who had been His companions. 
He knew them thoroughly — all their weaknesses and 
limitations — but He loved them and they loved Him. 
But strangely enough there is not in His mind the 
slightest sense of personal loss, on His part, at leav- 
ing them; not a word as to His missing their associa- 
tion and companionship in the future. All that we 
expect those who love us truly to say when they part 
from us, even for a long journey, He left unsaid. He 
told them how much they would miss Him, but not 
a word fell from His lips as to how He would miss 
them. What is the explanation of this? Does it not 
run all through these chapters? They would not see 
Him, or consciously share His experiences; but He 
would see them, share all their experiences, and 
enter into their lives more profoundly than ever be- 
fore. As another Evangelist reports Him as say- 
ing, He would "be with them all the days. " There is 
little or nothing in ordinary human intercourse to 
furnish an analogy between this relationship of Jesus 
and His friends. The very fact that He should have 
conceived such a relationship as that He indicates 
as possible, is one of the incidental and often over- 



184 The Great Ministry 

looked aspects of the consciousness of Jesus which 
points toward His divinity. 

Now we have no means whatever of testing the 
truth of the forecast of Jesus, that He would be as 
actually present with His disciples as though they 
were conscious of association with Him through the 
perception of the senses. But one of the marvels of 
Christian experience is that it so uniformly bears 
witness to the reality of the presence and help of the 
unseen Christ. Wherever you find a company of 
Christians, testifying to one another of the way God 
has dealt with them, the constant note in their wit- 
ness is the consciousness of the presence of Christ, in 
times of hardship and temptation, in the experience 
of joy. The uniformity of this witness in every age 
is one of the outstanding facts of Christian history. 
It is as clear in this century as it was in the sixteenth, 
or the eleventh, or the fifth or the first. May it not 
be that we have in this fact of the inner life a decisive 
vindication of the forecast of our Lord? 

And we may go a step beyond this. In this discourse 
Jesus distinctly said that the whole efficiency of His 
disciples in carrying on His work would depend on 
His unseen presence and co-operation. And has it 
not been true that efficiency in Christian service has 
very largely been in proportion to the soul's realiza- 
tion of the presence of Christ (Gal. 1:15, 16)? 

Did some devout spirit of the second century attrib- 
ute these ideas to Jesus? It is incredible. He must 
have spoken them. And the attitude toward the 
future, toward the triumph of His kingdom, toward 
the Father and toward His followers that these words 
reveal, has throughout the ages been one of the 
strongest bases of faith in Him. When men come to 
great sorrows, great temptations and conflicts; when 
they face death; the chapters in the Bible which they 
wish to have read are these which record the farewell 
message of our Lord. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 

The Shadow of the Cross. 

Mt. 26:36-56. 

It is one thing to feel the enthusiasm and spiritual 
elevation of a high resolve at a table surrounded by- 
loving and sympathetic friends, and quite another 
thing to remain in this mood after the company breaks 
up and the lighted chamber is exchanged for the dark- 
ness and chill of the night. In the farewell conver- 
sations of Jesus with His disciples in the upper room 
there is not a hint of repining or shrinking. He strikes 
the confident and heroic note with a sureness of touch 




From a photograph. 

The Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives. 

As seen from the city walls. 

that imparted to His friends something of His own 
certainty of the ultimate triumph of the kingdom. 

In company with the eleven friends Jesus left the 
supper room when the evening was far spent. The 
little band made their way through the crowded streets 
— for though the hour was late the night was a festal 
occasion on which few slept. They passed through 
one of the city gates, over the foot bridge that crossed 
the Kidron, which at this season was a rushing moun- 
tain stream, into the haunts that Jesus loved — the 

185 



186 The Great Ministry 

green and shady olive groves and vineyards on the 
western slope of the Mount of Olives. During this 
walk the mood of Jesus underwent a great change. 
The cross looked very different to Him from what it 
did at the table in the upper room. He knew what 
was before Him then, but there w^ere aspects of what 
awaited Him that did not appeal to Him then in just 
the same way that they did now. We brace ourselves 
to bear a misfortune, and we think that it cannot be 
worse when it comes than it is now, after we have 
made up our minds to it. But when the telegram 
actually comes announcing the sweeping away of a 
fortune, or the death of one precious to us, there are 
a reality, a hardness, and a finality about the message 
that were utterly absent from our forecasts. 

Do not let us imagine that the change in the mood 
of Jesus makes Him less heroic. The courageous man 
is not the one who has no fears, whose heart does not 
quail as he faces some grave peril, but the courageous 
man is the one whose spirit masters these tremors and 
forebodings under the impulse of some great call of 
love, or duty, or honor to which he absolutely sur- 
renders himself. The truth is that the shrinking of 
Jesus from the cross, while it does not make Him less 
heroic, brings Him vastly nearer to humanity than 
any stolid advance toward death could possibly do. 
We see that the divine life was lived under human 
conditions and limitations, and that in the pro- 
foundest sense the Master can sympathize with the 
sorrows and burdens of humanity. 

A question arises just here which must often have 
occurred to students of the gospels. Why was it that 
when Jesus came face to face with the cross, upon this 
last night of His life, He was so profoundly affected 
by it. As we have seen, just before the transfiguration 
He anticipated this hour, and administered a severe 
rebuke to Peter when he ventured to question the 
accuracy of the forecast. He had deliberately re- 



The Sliadow of the Cross 



187 




turned from Perea to Jerusalem to bear a witness 
which even the most obtuse of the disciples had 
thought would result in His death. Two days before 
this He had delivered messages that made impossible 
any compromise with those seeking His life. Socrates 
had done much the same. He had seen from afar 
what was coming; he had refused to seek safety by 
flight; he persisted 
in his faithful but 
irritating message. 
Still when Socrates 
came to meet death 
he did it with calm- 
ness and serenity. 
Neither Zenophon 
nor Plato give the 
impression that Soc- 
rates was at all loth 
to drink the poison, 
if that was what 
the law ordained. 

The Evangelists do not give that impression of 
Jesus in their account of this night. To be sure, when 
Judas had betrayed Him, and before Caiaphas and 
Herod and Pilate, the mood of the upper room re- 
turned. Socrates actually did not meet death more 
bravely and unflinchingly than did Jesus; and there 
is no comparison between the horror a death on the 
cross would arouse in any finely organized man, and 
the dread of drinking a quick and painless poison. 

Why, then, did Jesus, who answers so magnificently 
to every test of courage, dread so profoundly the death 
of the cross, that on this night in Gethsemane He 
prayed that, if it were possible, He might be delivered 
from it ? 

The writers of the New Testament have an expla- 
nation of this singular fact that, for many centuries, 
has profoundly impressed the thought of Christians. 



From a photograph. 

Olive Trees in the Garden of Gethsemane. 



188 The Great Ministry 

They say that death did not mean to Jesus what it 
meant to Socrates. To Socrates it meant what it 
means generally to men — the end of life on the earth, 
with a more or less clear anticipation of life under 
other conditions. To Jesus His death meant personal 
identification with the spiritual loss and ruin of sinful 
humanity. It was not the physical dread of death 
that appealed to Jesus, except in the very slightest 
degree, if at all. Death to Jesus was the symbol and 
penalty of the curse of sin. The death of Jesus 
meant the absolute and perfect participation, on His 
part, in the curse and destiny of sinful humanity. 
And the victory of Jesus over death means that sinful 
humanity is to share His destiny just as He by His 
death has shared its lot. 

If the death of Jesus was what the great Messianic 
prophecies had indicated the sufferings of the servant 
of Jehovah should be (Is. 53:5, 6); if His death was 
what He Himself declared it was, "a ransom for 
many" (Mt. 20:28); if He was, as the Baptist de- 
clared, "the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin 
of the world" (Jo. 1:29), the reason of the agony in 
the garden, of the sweating of the drops of blood, of 
the prayer that He might not drink "the cup" be- 
comes intelligible. The veil is lifted a little. We 
can understand how the agony of Gethsemane points 
to the eternal relations, and to the worth in the 
eternal realm of the cross of Christ. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 
Caiaphas and Pilate. 

Jo. 18:12—19:16. 

The late Professor Simon Greenleaf of the Harvard 
Law School undoubtedly expresses the opinion of 
most competent lawyers that the condemnation of 
Jesus by the Jewish authorities as worthy of death, 
w r as, in spite of its grave technical irregularities, from 
the point of view of the Jewish lawyers and judges, 
entirely justifiable. It is important to realize sharply 

the truth of this 

statement in order 
that we may see 
precisely what was 
the sin and crime of 
those who brought 
Jesus to the cross. 
Of course it must 
be conceded at the 
outset of this exam- 
ination that Annas 
and Caiaphas and 
their party had a 
strong desire to get 
Jesus out of the 
way, and that they made use of their position, 
and of every technical point to compass this end. 
But the critical point in the two Jewish examina- 
tions was when Caiaphas asked Jesus the solemn, 
direct question, "I adjure thee by the living 
God, that thou tell us whether thou art the 
Christ, the Son of God" (Mt. 26:63). To that Jesus 
unequivocally answered, "I am" (Mk. 14:62). Then 
it was that the high priest rent his garments, and 
said, "He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need 

189 




Courtyard of the Traditional House of 
Caiaphas. 



190 1 he Great Ministry 

have we of witnesses" (Mt. 26:65) ? There can be no 
doubt that this claim of Jesus was in their eyes to 
be justly construed as blasphemy, and that the pre- 
scribed penalty of blasphemy was death (Deut. 18: 
20). 

What, then, was the sin of the Jewish leaders in 
this judgment against Jesus? Was it not this, that 
traditional views and partisan considerations and sel- 
fish advantage had so blinded their eyes that they 
could not see or understand that the claim of Jesus 
was true that He was indeed the Messiah, the Son of 
God? The only values they could appreciate were 
those that appealed to their prejudices based on an 
unspiritual view of life, and to their pride of place. 
The sin of the leaders of the nation who sought the 
death of Jesus was simply the commonplace, vulgar 
sin of " blindness of heart," unresponsiveness to spir- 
itual values, the inability to appreciate anything that 
could not be reduced to the terms of their immediate 
desires. The sin of these ancient Hebrews, then, was 
in no way unique or peculiar, it is the sin that meets 
us to-day in our houses arid in our business and social 
life — the sin of spending money for that which is not 
bread, and labor for that which does not satisfy be- 
cause we do not see what is good (Is. 55:2). The 
things of supreme worth are before us, and we do not 
respond to them. 

This witness of Jesus to Himself before Caiaphas 
is one of the mountain peaks of the gospel story. For 
a long time Jesus carefully avoided asserting His 
divinity. He wished to have it come to His disciples 
as a slowly ripening conviction, identified with the 
very substance of their spiritual experience. He did 
not tell them how great He was, He let them perceive 
it. But now before Caiaphas He makes the stagger- 
ing assertion, "I am the Christ, the Son of God." 
He not only made the assertion, but He gave up His 
life in witness to its truth. Nothing can be plainer 



Caiaphas and Pilate 191 

than that His enemies had no case against Him before 
He made that answer to the high priest. After that 
they had all the case they wanted. This was the 
supreme witness of Jesus. He died because He could 
not deny Himself. Perhaps those who have argued 
for the divinity of Jesus have not always seen as 
clearly as they should the pivotal nature of His answer 
to Caiaphas. He knew who He was and what He 
was better than any one else; and, on trial for His 
life, when another answer, or even an evasion, w r ould 
have foiled His enemies, He said, "I am the Messiah, 
the Son of God. " 

The sin of Pilate was not the same as the sin of 
Caiaphas and the priestly leaders. The sin of the 
latter was that of moral blindness; the sin of Pilate 
was deliberate disloyalty to the light. Pilate knew 
that he was putting an innocent man to death; he 
detected at once the difference between the kingship 
Jesus asserted and any claim that would annoy the 
Roman power; he honestly tried to save Jesus, pro- 
posing one weak compromise after another. And at 
length he yielded to the suggestion that, if he let 
Jesus go, his enemies would make out a plausible case 
against him of unfriendliness to Tiberius Caesar. The 
struggle cost Pilate a great deal. He saw clearly 
enough what was right. His sympathies, his moral 
nature, and the entreaties of his wife were all on the 
side of Jesus; but the harm this unreasoning Jewish 
mob could do him at Rome, the assumption that prob- 
ably one fanatic more or less in turbulent Jewry was 
a neglectable factor, overbore his conscience and 
judgment, and, in the terse and terrible words of 
John, that read like a sentence from the biting page 
of Tacitus, "Then therefore he delivered him unto 
them to be crucified" (Jo. 19:16). 

It may be said that the sin of Caiaphas is simply 
the resultant of the sin of Pilate, that by repeated 
disloyalties to conscience men lose the power of moral 



192 The Great Ministry 

discrimination, but that does not always account for 
unresponsiveness to spiritual values. Heredity, train- 
ing, atmosphere, prejudice, partisan interest, selfish 
advantage, really blind men's eyes to the things of 
supreme worth. Such forces operated, for example, 
with the Apostle Paul. It is not inconceivable that 
if he, at this time, had been on the Sanhedrin that 
condemned Jesus he would have voted with the party 
of Caiaphas. But it cannot be doubted that dis- 
loyalties to conscience like that of Pilate sear the 
moral nature, so that the power to discern the truth 
at all is lessened. Goethe was right when he said, 
"He who sins against the light kisses the lips of a 
blazing cannon." The tremendous penalty of sin is 
not external punishment of any kind, long or short, 
but the disintegration of faculties so that they do 
not function, and men having eyes see not. How 
far the sin of Caiaphas was like the sin of Pilate, and 
how far it was like the sin of Paul, only the All Wise 
Reader of the secrets of the heart can determine. 

The report of Pilate's examination of Jesus makes 
it plain that before the man who really held the death 
penalty in his hand, Jesus withdrew nothing that He 
had asserted before Caiaphas. He is a king. He 
claims it, and the procurator feels that it is true. 
Pilate sees that with the old purple cloak thrown 
about Him, with the crown of thorns from which the 
blood drips upon His head, with a stick in His hand, 
and with the spittle of the soldiers upon His beard, 
He is the royal One, and he has a strange conscious- 
ness that he is before the judgment seat of Jesus, 
while Jesus seems to be before his tribunal. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

"He Died for our Sins." 

Mt. 27:32-66. 

There was no appeal from the decision of Pilate. 
Roman law enjoined the immediate execution of a 
sentence that could not be appealed from, hence that 
very afternoon Jesus was remanded to the Roman 
soldiery to be crucified. This is one of the most 
cruel forms of executing the death penalty that men 
have ever devised, and happily the prevalence of 
humane sentiments has banished it from the borders 
of civilization. 

The events of that afternoon have been burned 
into the consciousness of the modern world. Many 




The New Calvary, Showing the Face of the Cliff. 
Drawn from a photograph taken from the north wall of Jerusalem. 

of the most celebrated works of art in sculpture and 
painting have set before us these incidents. The most 
competent writers in both prose and poetry have 
striven to set that afternoon vividly before our imag- 
inations. One day in the year throughout Christen- 
dom is devoted to the memory of those hours, and the 
most ignorant peasant in Southern Europe knows 
what the crucifix means, and, as she kisses the image, 

193 



194 The Great Ministry 

has recalled to mind some features of that astounding 
event. That Friday afternoon of April has become 
the outstanding day in human history. Throughout 
the centuries, when men have felt the pressure and 
realized the power of sin, and above all, when they 
have been called from the earth to meet God, they 
have thought of Golgotha, and of the three crosses 
and of the Divine sufferer. 

It is needless for us to recite the events. It will be 
more profitable for us to consider the question which 
lies so near the heart of the religion of Jesus: What 
is the significance of these occurrences? What is the 
meaning of the cross of Christ? 

The crucifixion of Jesus, from one point of view, is 
the gravest indictment conceivable against the provi- 
dential government of the world. What kind of God 
is it who can permit the purest and noblest life to be 
caught in the whirring machinery of cause and effect 
to perish cruelly and shamefully on the cross ? If this 
can be the destiny of a career like that of Jesus, the 
ruler of the universe must be utterly regardless of 
moral distinctions. Virtue is only a name, and the 
force at the heart of things is utterly blind or malevo- 
lent. The evil there is in the world often taxes the 
faith of the best men in the goodness of God. The 
death of Jesus upon the cross seems to be a conclusive 
demonstration that God is not good. If the cross 
was the portion of the pure and holy Jesus, what rea- 
son have we for believing that anything good is in 
store for one of us, except as good may be wrought 
out by mere chance? 

There is absolutely no answer to such questions, 
except the most sinister one, unless the death of Jesus 
looks beyond itself, and accomplishes results in the 
moral realm adequate to the stupendous cost of the 
means. The writers of the New Testament give that 
interpretation to the death of Jesus. They declare 
that it is not an end, but the means to an end which 






"He Died for our Sins'" 195 

amply and gloriously justifies it. They say that "He 
died for our sins," and that, through His death, the 
possibility of the forgiveness of sins, of the redemption 
of human life from the power of evil, and of the re- 
conciliation of man with God is realized. In other 
words, God permitted the tragedy of the cross, with 
its blazing injustice, for a purpose of love; and the 
cross of Christ, instead of demonstrating the careless- 
ness of God as to moral distinctions, is the supreme 
evidence of His good will and love to men. The 
Apostle Paul goes so far as to say that it is such an 
overwhelming proof of the love of God for man that 
it is a reason for believing that God will do every 
thing that omnipotence can do for man. This is the 
answer of the Scriptures to the apparently inexplicable 
enigma of the death of Christ upon the cross. This 
is the way that inspired men have harmonized the 
crucifixion with a belief in the moral order of the 
world. 

The question now arises, What did the death of 
Jesus accomplish upon the cross ? How did it achieve 
the results the Scriptures attribute to it ? It is no an- 
swer to that question simply to say that the cross of 
Christ manifests the love of God. Indeed, a strict 
logician is justified in saying that such an answer 
begs the question. Love must be purposeful and in- 
telligent to manifest itself in an act. If you are 
walking along a riverside with your boy, and throwing 
yourself into the water risk your life, you do not mani- 
fest your love for your boy by that act of insane 
folly. Your sacrifice of yourself has no intelligent 
relation to the welfare of the child. God does not 
and cannot manifest His love for men by any spec- 
tacular sacrifice on the part of Christ. But if your 
boy has fallen into the river, and you plunge after 
him, to save him at the risk or cost of your own life, 
that act of sacrifice demonstrates your love for your 
child. There is an intelligible relationship between 



196 The Great Ministry 

the sacrifice you make of yourself and what you pro- 
pose to accomplish. 

There have been many answers to the question as 
to how the death of Christ saves men. Great theolo- 
gies have divided in regard to that question. Answers 
that have been deemed conclusive and satisfactory 
in one age have not been so regarded in another, but 
all along the history of Christian thought, from the 
days of Paul to our own time, followers of Christ have 
believed that the death of Jesus accomplished some- 
thing in the eternal realm that made the forgive- 
ness of human sin and the salvation of men possible. 
The crucifixion of Jesus was not permitted by the 
moral indifference of God to holiness, but it was a 
manifestation of the love of God, who at this enor- 
mous cost, saved men from the guilt and power of sin. 

Still, however inadequate the plummet of our phil- 
osophies may be to sound the depths of this transcend- 
ent revelation, the witness of human experience has 
triumphantly vindicated the reality of the release 
from sin which the cross of Christ accomplished. 
Ten thousand times ten thousand hearts are now re- 
joicing in the spiritual emancipation and sense of 
fellowship with God that have come to them through 
the cross of Christ, and this experience has continued 
in different races and successive generations for hun- 
dreds of years. We take down from our shelves 
Ignatius of the second century, and he speaks of the 
cross of Christ as we do to-day. He finds in it the 
ground of peace with God. We go to India, and 
mingle with a group of native Christians and they 
say the same things. Across the seas and the cen- 
turies Christian hands clasp Christian hands. Fol- 
lowers of Jesus look into one another's eyes, and, 
though of different race and tradition and speech, they 
recognize one another as partakers of the mighty 
inner experience that centers about the cross of 
Christ. 



CHAPTER L. 

The Living Jesus. 
Mt. 28:1-15; Lu. 24:13-35; Jo. ch. 20. 

If we were reading the gospel narrative for the first 
time and came to the account of the death of Jesus 
upon the cross we should doubtless be conscious not 
only of the cruelty and injustice of the ending of His 
life, but we should feel that it was incongruous that 
One who was born in 
the way the gospels 
describe, who showed 
such power over na- 
ture and over death 
itself, who claimed and 
manifested such rela- 
tionship to God, should 
close His existence in 
dying like common 
men. The grave and 
worms and corruption 
are not an ending that 
carry the story truly on. Perhaps we could not say 
beforehand just how the arc of such a life should com- 
plete itself within the range of human vision, but 
certainly it ought not to end in death, and much less 
in the death of the cross. Whatever else we may 
think of the record of the resurrection of Jesus, it 
cannot be denied that it matches the account of the 
life of Jesus. The narrative, on the plane on which it 
is projected, is harmonious with itself. 

This way of regarding the resurrection of our Lord 
is in perfect accord with many of the representations 
of the New Testament. In the first Apostolic sermon, 
delivered a few weeks after the morning of the resur- 
rection, we find Peter saying that God raised up Jesus, 

197 




From a photograph. 

Entrance to the New Tomb. 



198 The Great Ministry 

having loosed the pangs of death, because "it was not 
possible that he should be holden of it" (Acts 2:24). 
The meaning is plain. The resurrection was not 
accomplished by some addition to the power that was 
inherent in Jesus during His life. The resurrection 
was simply a manifestation of the power we see in 
Jesus when He commanded the winds to cease, when 
He recalled Lazarus to life, and when He was conscious 
of the closest fellowship with the Father. "It was 
not possible that he should be holden of it." The 
ideas of Jesus and death are as incongruous as the 
ideas of a Rothschild and abject poverty; as the ideas 
of Sir Isaac Newton and crass ignorance ; as the ideas 
of Beethoven and insensibility to musical harmonies. 
What is in our minds when we think of Jesus as 
irreconcilable with our thought of death? The dec- 
laration, "Jesus is dead," is a contradiction in terms. 
"It was not possible that he should be holden of it. " 
From this point of view the resurrection of Jesus is 
not a miracle. The miraculous element lies far back 
of the resurrection morning, it lies in the personality 
of Jesus Himself. That is the wonderful, the astound- 
ing phenomenon. The miracles, as we call them, re- 
corded in the gospels, the words of wisdom, the super- 
nal consciousness, are all manifestations of the one 
great miracle, the personality, the character of Jesus. 
This view does not minimize the place of the resur- 
rection in Christian evidences, rather it enhances it, 
for it does not regard the rising of Jesus from the 
dead as an isolated phenomenon; it regards it as the 
natural, the inevitable sequence of the divine life — ■ 
"It was not possible that he should be holden of it." 

But there is good reason for doubting whether the 
New Testament writers and the early Christians re- 
garded the resurrection chiefly as a piece of evidence 
to other truths. It was something much more vital 
than a link in a chain of logic. Peter brought out the 
ruling idea of the first disciples in his explanation to 



The Living Jesus 1 99 

the Sanhedrin of the healing of the lame man at the 
Beautiful Gate. He said, "Be it known unto you all, 
and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom 
God raised from the dead, even in him doth this man 
stand here before you whole" (Acts 4:10). In other 
words, through the resurrection, Jesus continued to be 
an active personality in human concerns. The risen 
and living Jesus restored the lame man. "In him doth 
this man stand here before you whole." To the 
earliest Christian preachers the resurrection was not 
so much an argument as a fact that w T as self-explain- 
ing. It showed that Jesus was still alive. 

The truth that the mighty personality, which it was 
impossible for death to hold, is a present active force 
in the world to-day, comes very near to the heart of 
the gospel. Christianity is not expressed in a series 
of propositions, no matter how sublime or inspiring 
they may be; nor do men embrace Christianity by 
assenting to propositions. The religion of Jesus con- 
sists primarily in the relation between a human soul 
and a Person. When Jesus was on earth He said, 
"Come unto me," "Follow me," "Abide in me." 
These commands w r ere not simply for the Hebrews 
of Palestine during those short years of the first half 
of the first century. They are perpetual calls, open- 
ing perpetual privileges, because He who spoke them 
is still living, and invites men to-day to the fellow- 
ship that He offered to the first disciples. All that 
Jesus was on earth to men, all that He became to men 
by His sacrificial death on the cross, is available for 
men through the channels of personal fellowship with 
the living Jesus. 

The friend of the Master is not devoted to Him 
simply as to a beautiful memory. He sustains the 
most intimate relation to a living Person. He, the 
living Jesus, is now thinking of His friends, guiding 
them, opening ways for them, revealing His will to 



200 The Great Ministry 

them, giving them assurances of His love. Many a 
time in the pages of the gospel, in prayer, in the ful- 
filment of some taxing duty for His sake, we seem to 
catch intimations of His presence; and one of these 
days there will be a swift transition from the stony 
streets of our earthly cities to the golden pavements 
of the New Jerusalem; from the dwellings of wood 
and stone in which we live, to the Father's house; 
from seeing Him through a glass darkly to beholding 
Him face to face. 



CHAPTER LI. 

"The Same Jesus." 

Mt. 28:16-20; Lu. 24:44-53; Jo. ch. 21. 

In the course of these studies we have frequently- 
alluded to the difficulty of conceiving that the gospel 
narrative is the product of the imagination of the 
early Christians. That difficulty also confronts us 
when we consider the record of the post-resurrection 
appearances of Jesus. These accounts afe marked 
by so many delicate insights and correspondencies 
that they bear upon their face the proof that they are 
narratives of actual events. 

For example, what a marvelous thing it is that the 
Evangelists' apparent unconsciousness of what they 




The Church of the Ascension, on the Mount of Olives. 



were doing should have attributed to the Jesus of 
the resurrection the traits that are peculiarly charac- 
teristic of the Master before His crucifixion! Some 
of these qualities are so outstanding that they attract 
the attention of the dullest reader. 

One of the marked characteristics of Jesus in the 
days of His earthly life was the perfect balance in His 
conduct between the ideal and the practical. That 

201 



202 The Great Ministry 

is a rare combination of qualities, for the idealist is 
commonly thoughtless about common affairs, and the 
practical man is apt to think lightly of what makes 
no direct appeal to the perceptions of his senses. 
Though Jesus had the secret springs of His life in the 
unseen, and loved to retire to solitudes for self-com- 
munion and prayer, He never lost touch with the 
common interests and cares of humanity. His ser- 
mons and parables show the keenest appreciation of 
the facts of life and of the ways of men. His miracles 
were elicited by His sympathy with suffering. Upon 
the cross, when the face of God seemed to be hidden, 
and the burden of the world's sin rested upon His 
soul, He was so thoughtful for His mother that He 
designated as an arrangement for her comfort that 
John should care for her. The same trait marks the 
Jesus of the resurrection. Though in His brain are 
the thronging secrets behind the veil, He has a living 
sympathy with the toils and cares of our common lot. 
His first thought after the resurrection was for His 
disciples and especially for the faithless Peter to whom 
He sent a message by Mary Magdalene. We cannot 
miss the exquisite tact with which He made Himself 
known to the disciples at Emmaus, or the sympathy 
with which He met the doubt of Thomas. And when 
at Gennesaret the hungry and weary fishermen came 
to the shore they found that the Lord's hands had 
made ready the morning meal. 

Another trait in the character of Jesus during His 
earthly life was His absolute frankness in circum- 
stances that commonly lead men, at least by silence, 
to acquiesce in the errors of others. When others have 
touchingly manifested their appreciation of us it is 
by no means easy to rebuke them for their errors or 
faults. But directly after Peter had uttered his mag- 
nificent confession, "Thou are the Christ, the Son of 
the living God," Jesus addressed to Peter one of the 
severest rebukes that ever fell from His lips. The 



"The Same Jesus''' 203 

atmosphere of the scene on the beach at Gennesaret, 
after the resurrection, is suffused with the love-light 
that follows forgiveness and reconciliation, and yet, 
at that very time, Jesus administered a deserved re- 
buke to the Peter whom He restored, because the 
disciple was putting curiosity above duty. 

Still another characteristic of the Master was His 
reluctance, in dealing with sinners, to drag their sins 
to a mortifying exposure. He quickened the con- 
science of sinful men, but He did not cross-examine 
them. There was an infinitely delicate reticence 
about Him in speaking of sins. In His light sinners 
knew their sins, and they knew that He knew them. 
That was enough. The probing, scrutinizing, tabu- 
lating disposition was not in Him. His dealing with 
the woman in Simon's house, with Zacchaeus, with 
the woman taken in sin, illustrate this. The Jesus of 
the resurrection has the same trait. The first inter- 
view with Peter was private. No one knows what 
took place behind the closed doors in the house of 
Zacchaeus; no one knows what took place between 
Peter and the Master. Before Peter's fellow disciples 
there is no railing accusation, no reproach no drag- 
ging the man to confession; only a question of love. 
The Jesus of the resurrection, who said to Peter in the 
early morning by the lakeside, "Lovest thou me," 
is the Jesus of Nazareth who said to the woman in 
Simon's house, "Thy sins are forgiven," and then to 
Simon, "for she loved much. " 

A striking feature of the thought of Jesus comes 
out in His teaching as to His kingdom. There runs 
through His words before His death an expectation 
that His claims would be universally acknowledged, 
that His kingdom would be w r orld-wide. This peasant 
from an insignificant village declared that His field 
was the world. He spoke with much confidence of 
the time when men would come from every quarter 
to crowd into His kingdom. He went so far as to 



204 The Great Ministry 

say that He would be the judge of "all nations." 
One of the most quoted, massive utterances of the 
first Napoleon is his declaration, "I propose to make 
the Mediterranean a French lake," but that expres- 
sion of imperial ambition dwindles beside the pre- 
diction of Jesus. We turn to the sentences which 
the Evangelists put on the lips of Jesus after the 
resurrection, and there runs through them the same 
magnificent confidence. We cannot be insensible to 
the sublime sweep of the last commission. Like His 
earlier utterances it embraces the world and antici- 
pates its end: "All authority hath been given unto 
me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and 
make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into 
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatso- 
ever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, 
even unto the end of the world" (Mt. 28:18-20). 
These sentences bear the unmistakable impress of 
the mind of Jesus. They are of the same mintage as 
His earlier forecasts of His kingdom. It is not easy 
to account for them on any theory that denies that 
Jesus of Narazeth rose from the dead and spoke them. 
It would be a pleasing task to elaborate, from this 
point of view, the proof it furnishes for the truth of 
the resurrection itself. But the argument would 
sweep far beyond the establishment of the historic 
fact; it would show that the experiences of the mys- 
teries of existence wrought no change in our Lord's 
essential personality, or in His views of truth, from 
the very circumstance that after His resurrection He 
amended nothing, changed nothing, but instructed 
His disciples to proclaim what He had told them be- 
fore to the end of time. Above all, this line of thought 
affords a firm basis for confidence that He is now 
what He is in the pages of the gospels. When we go 
to the pier to meet the friend who has been journey- 
ing for years in foreign lands, how difficult it is to 



"The Same Jesus" 205 

suppress the foreboding that he may have been so 
changed by his experience that the old tie of loving 
confidence has been broken! When Lazarus sat at 
the table with the sisters in Bethany after he had been 
restored from the dead, was the relationship between 
them and him the same as before his sickness? The 
facts we are studying answer such questions as to 
Jesus. Mary recognized the familiar tone in His voice. 
His attitude toward human life, His frankness, His 
sympathy, and His anticipations as to His kingdom 
are the same after the resurrection as before His 
death, and we may w r ell believe that if the experiences 
of the cross and the grave did not change Him, nothing 
will, and when to-day we come to Him in prayer we 
come to One whom we know. 



CHAPTER LII. 
Interpreting Jesus. 

Review of Chapters XL-LI. 

The importance of the events in the life of Jesus 
after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem is indicated 
by the fact that the first three gospels devote from a 
third to a half of their space to this period, and John 
about three-fifths of his entire book. During the 
forty-seven days between the triumphal entry and the 
ascension we have the main facts for a just estimate 
of the personality and ministry of Jesus. This period 
reveals what He was and what He did for men. In 
view of these facts it is proper that we should devote 
the closing chapter of these studies to the general im- 
pression made by the New Testament portraiture of 
the career of Jesus. 

To begin with, it is very plain that He appears be- 
fore us as the culmination of a long, historic process 
in which the hopes and promises of the preceding 
revelation are finally realized. Jesus was profoundly 
conscious, and often asserted, that the stream of the 
historic revelation and of the spiritual life of Israel 
culminated in Himself. Time and again, He saw in 
the Old Testament Scriptures forecasts of the details 
of His own life. Lawgivers and prophets and relig- 
ious poets were unconsciously guided in their utter- 
ances so that their words became anticipatory of His 
character and ministry. The great argument, which 
more than any other contributed to the establishment 
of the religion of Jesus upon a firm historical basis, 
was the one which Jesus Himself suggested in 
His conversation with the disciples on the way 
to Emmaus, when we are told that, "beginning 
from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted 
to them in all the scriptures the things concerning 

206 



Interpreting Jesus 207 

himself" (Lu. 24:27). The staple of the Apostolic 
preaching was the elaboration of this argument (Acts 
2:25-33; 7:51-53; 17:3). Because of this fact it is 
impossible to come to a just appreciation of Jesus by 
considering Him as an isolated personality in Pales- 
tine, or even by setting Him imaginatively in the 
environment of the civilization of that day. The 
environment of Jesus is something far larger than the 
Graeco-Roman world of the first century. It is a 
divinely guided, vast historic process. It reaches 
back to the call of Abraham, and back of that to the 
promise in the garden. Vague hints and aspirations, 
the institutions of Israel, the strange, troubled 
national history, and the voices of prophets gradually 
becoming clearer and more positive make up the real 
environment of Jesus, and He is the product of the 
divine intelligence and purpose that was in the history 
and the institutions and the visions. Jesus fulfils and 
interprets the revelation to and in Israel, and at the 
same time that earlier revelation helps us to interpret 
Him. 

Again, we must not forget that this portraiture of 
Jesus has clarified and determined the moral ideal 
of the race. Cicero makes the naive remark that up 
to this time philosophers had not been able to agree 
what manner of person a perfectly good (just) man 
should be. Wherever the portraiture of Jesus in the 
gospels has gone that question has been finally an- 
swered. The only attempt worth noticing in modern 
times to throw doubt upon the perfection of the ideal 
of Jesus was by John Stuart Mill in his essay on 
Liberty, but readers of Mill's posthumous essays 
will recall that his mature judgment was that "it 
would not be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a 
better translation of the rule of virtue from the 
abstract into the concrete than to endeavor so to live 
that Christ would approve our life" (Three Essays 
on Religion, p. 255). The record of the Evangelists 



208 The Great Ministry 

has done what the analyses and speculations of the 
finest brains could not accomplish. It has set forth 
a moral ideal which is self -evidencing and satisfying. 
It not only meets the needs of the reason and of the 
moral nature, but meets them so perfectly that by 
responding to it reason becomes true in its action 
and the moral nature purified. In philosophy and 
art and jurisprudence and science the sceptre of 
authority has passed from hand to hand, but in the 
spiritual life and in the practice of virtue Jesus holds 
an uncontested place. 

Within the next half century the great historic 
faiths are destined to come to close quarters. Hu- 
manly speaking, the religious history of the next 
thousand years will be determined by the issue of 
the conflict that discerning minds see from afar. One 
of the supreme forces of Christianity in that struggle 
will be the supremacy of its moral ideal. The procla- 
mation from whatever quarter of a nobler moral ideal 
than that of Christ would mean that slowly, perhaps, 
but nevertheless inevitably, Jesus would be superseded. 

Still further, we must interpret the character and 
ministry of Jesus in the light of the fact that He is 
the source of the Christian experience. Principal 
Fairbairn remarks that there is a history which the 
record of the Evangelists has made as well as a history 
which it records. This is not the place in the page 
which remains even to hint at the course of his high 
argument, but his remark suggests that there is a 
Christian experience, with its sense of emancipation 
from sin, with its consciousness of peace with God, 
with its knowledge of fellowship with the unseen 
Christ, which has been generated by spiritual contact 
with the Person of whom the record tells us. No 
interpretation of Jesus makes full use of the materials 
at hand which does not explore and explain this mar- 
velous Christian experience. The Christians who 
gather for a prayer meeting on the plains of Montana, 



Interpreting Jesus 209 

or in the trackless forests of the Canadian Northwest, 
understand better how the Christians of the second 
century in the Roman catacombs felt, and what they 
believed and hoped for, than a consummate archaeolo- 
gist, like Dill or Lanciani, comprehends the life of 
imperial Rome of the same period. The scholars 
draw inferences from fragments of literature and 
inscriptions and ruins, the Christians penetrate, by a 
deep interior bond of spiritual sympathy, into the 
very souls of their brethren, who loved and followed 
the Master seventeen hundred years ago. Like their 
brethren in Rome, the Christians of to-day have 
experienced the forgiveness of sins through faith in 
Jesus; they know that from Him there comes a new 
spiritual force for righteousness; they are persuaded 
that He, the shepherd of souls, will keep His flock. 
It is in the light of such facts and experiences that 
we must interpret the personality and ministry of 
Jesus; and it is in the light of all the facts that, when 
to-day the question is asked that is put to Simon 
Peter, we answer with him, "Thou art the Christ, the 
Son of the living God. " 



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